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THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  ILLINOIS 
LIBRARY 


.  '  :;>/>!  •■ 


.-I  A 

• 

1 

A  SHORT 


HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


BY 

ERNEST  F.  HENDERSON 


VOLUME  II 

1648  AJX  TO  1914  A.D. 


NEW  EDITION  WITH  ADDITIONAL  CHAPTERS 


Ntfrr  gorfe 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1916 


All  rights  reserved 


Copyright,  1902,  anb  1916, 

By  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.  Published  February,  1902. 


New  edition  with  additional  chapters,  May,  1916. 


NortoUDtl  $re38 

J.  S.  Cushing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

I.  The  Rise  of  the  Prussian  Monarchy . 

II.  The  Turkish  Campaigns,  the  Aggressions  of  Louis  XIV., 

•  and  the  Spanish  Succession  War . 

III.  The  Father  of  Frederick  the  Great . 

IV. .  The  Wars  of  Frederick  the  Great . 

V.  Frederick  the  Great  in  Time  of  Peace  . 

VI.  The  French  Revolution,  the  Disruption  of  Germany, 

and  the  Downfall  of  Prussia . 

VII.  The  Regeneration  of  Prussia  and  the  War  of  Liberation 
i-VIII.  The  Struggle  for  Constitutional  Government  and  the 

Revolution  of  1848  . 

IX.  The  Reckoning  with  Austria . 

X.  The  Reckoning  with  France  and  the  Attainment  of 
German  Unity . 

XI.  Political  Developments  from  1871  to  1914 

XII.  Economic  Progress  between  1871  and  1914 

XIII.  Social  Progress  down  to  1914 . 

Chronological  Table  ........ 

Index  . 


or 


t  vw'  ' — J 


o 


\ 


PASS 

1 

44 

87 

i 

123 

182 

219 

270 

324 

370 

faH  . 

■  (s> 

411 

451 

508 

542 

579 

591 


\ 


MAPS 


Growth  of  Prussia  to  1806  „ 

0 

• 

• 

• 

• 

FACING  PAGE 

.  157 

Germany  from  1815  to  1866  . 

o 

© 

• 

• 

c 

.  303 

Prussia,  1806-1871 

9 

• 

© 

• 

9 

.  359 

Modern  Germany  . 

© 

o 

• 

e 

.  427 

Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive  ~ 

in  2019  with  funding  from 

University  of  Illinois  Urbana-Champaign  Alternates 


- 

. 


https://archive.org/details/shorthistoryofge02hend 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  RISE  OF  THE  PRUSSIAN  MONARCHY 

Literature  :  A  storehouse  of  information  for  all  that  concerns  Prus¬ 
sian  history  is  the  series  known  as  Forschungen  zur  brandenburgischen 
und  preussischen  Geschichte.  Eberty,  Geschichte  des  preussischen  jStaates, 
must  be  used  with  caution.  In  Schmoller,  Umrisse  und  TJntersuchungen, 
are  many  valuable  studies  on  economic  matters.  Tuttle’s  History  of 
Prussia  has  its  merits,  but  is  partial  and  occasionally  uncritical.  Erd- 
mannsdorfer,  in  his  Deutsche  Geschichte ,  1648-1740,  is  good  but  does  not 
devote  much  space  to  Prussia.  Pierson,  Preussische  Geschichte ,  is  up  to 
date  with  his  facts.  Waddington,  L' acquisition  de  la  couronne  royale  de 
Prusse  par  les  Hohenzollern ,  is  a  valuable  study.  Dohna’s  Memoires  are 
interesting.  Varnhagen  von  Ense’s  Leben  der  Konigin  von  Preussen 
Sophie  Charlotte  is  charming. 

Leaving  aside  for  a  moment  the  general  history  of 
Germany,  it  becomes  necessary  to  trace  the  steps  by  which 
one  state  rose  so  high  above  the  rest  that  it  finally  became 
the  acknowledged  head  and  leader.  Up  to  the  accession 
in  1640  of  that  Frederick  William  who  was  later  known 
as  the  Great  Elector,  the  family  of  Hohenzollern  could 
boast  of  no  very  distinguished  members,  and  their  territory 
consisted  of  scattered  provinces  with  no  real  bond  of  union. 
The  Mark  Brandenburg  had  been  in  Hohenzollern  hands 
for  two  centuries  and  a  quarter,  and  the  early  margraves, 
save  for  fulfilling  their  occasional  duties  as  electors  of  the 
Holy  Roman  Empire,  had  spent  their  time  in  conflicts  with 
their  own  nobles  and  cities.  Frederick  I.,  on  whom,  at 

VOL.  II  —  B  1 


The  early 
margraves 
of  Branden¬ 
burg. 


Joachim  I. 


V 


c 


> 


Z  A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

the  Council  of  Constance,  the  Emperor  Sigismund  had 
conferred  the  Mark,  in  recognition  of  his  belligerent  ways 
and  administrative  talents,  had  devoted  his  life  and  fortune 
to  improving  the  land.  He  gained  the  upper  hand  of  the 
Quitzows,  Rochows,  Alvenslebens,  and  other  independent 
minded  noble  families  by  the  aid  of  “  Faule  Grete,”  or  “  Lazy 
Peg,”  —  a  very  ordinary  cannon  to  those  who  view  it  to-day 
outside  of  the  Berlin  Arsenal,  but  an  instrument  of  coer¬ 
cion  without  its  peer  in  the  early  fifteenth  century.  Mar¬ 
grave  Frederick  II.  tried  much  the  same  kind  of  argu¬ 
ment  against  the  citizens  of  Berlin,  and  finally  built  a 
strong  fortress  in  their  midst,  which  forms  part  of  the  pres¬ 
ent  castle.  This  same  Frederick  II.  it  was  who  purchased 
from  the  insolvent  Teutonic  Order  the  province  known  as 
the  New  Mark,  stretching  from  the  Oder  on  the  west,  and 
the  Warthe  on  the  south,  far  north  into  Pomerania,  Thus 
was  inaugurated  that  specially  Hohenzollern  policy  of 
widening  the  inherited  boundaries.  From  that  day  to 
this,  with  but  one  or  two  exceptions,  each  ruler  in  turn, 
by  inheritance,  by  purchase,  by  conquest,  or  by  peaceful 
annexation,  has  added  something  to  his  original  domains. 

Brandenburg’s  attitude  in  the  great  religious  conflicts  of 
the  sixteenth  century,  was  dubious  and  unfortunate  ;  there 
was  no  attempt  to  take  an  independent  stand,  and  there 
were  times  when,  in  the  larger  affairs  of  the  empire,  the 
electorate  was  merely  the  satellite  of  Saxony.  At  the  time 
of  Martin  Luther’s  great  activity  the  elector  was  Joachim 
I.,  a  stern,  just  man,  essentially  of  legal  mind,  —  the  same 
who  introduced  Roman  law  into  the  land,  and  established 
at  Berlin  the  first  general  supreme  court  for  all  the  marks 
or  provinces.  He  travelled  around  to  see  that  his  cities 
were  well  governed,  reformed  the  weights  and  measures, 
tried  to  put  down  the  all-pervading  tendency  to  luxury  in 
dress,  and  even  organized  an  effective  fire  service.  For 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  PRUSSIAN  MONARCHY  3 

theology  he  cared  little ;  astrology  was  far  more  to  his 
taste  ;  and  once,  when  the  destruction  of  Berlin  by  light¬ 
ning  had  been  foretold  for  a  certain  day,  he  drove  out  to  the 
Tempelhof  heights  to  witness  the  spectacle.  If,  therefore, 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  many  of  his  subjects  cherished 
Lutheran  sympathies,  he  emphatically  declared  for  the 
v  Catholic  cause,  the  grounds  of  his  action  were  chiefly 
political.  He  feared  that  a  change  of  religion  would  bring 
about  a  revolution,  and,  indeed,  laid  the  whole  blame  of 
the  Peasants’  War  to  the  new  teachings.  Having  once 
taken  his  ground,  he  maintained  it  with  great  determina¬ 
tion,  joining  with  those  who  urged  Charles  V.  to  break 
his  safe-conduct  to  Luther,  and  threatening  to  put  to  death 
his  own  wife,  the  daughter  of  the  Danish  king,  whom  he 
one  day  discovered  to  have  partaken  of  the  Holy  Com¬ 
munion  in  both  forms.  The  electress  fled  to  Saxony, 
where  she  spent  three  months  under  the  humble  roof  of 
Luther  and  his  wife,  and  then  settled  in  a  castle  near 
Wittenberg. 

More  important  than  the  electress’s  own  choice  of  a 
faith,  is  the  fact  that  her  eldest  son  shared  her  views  ;  and, 
in  truth,  four  years  after  his  accession,  in  1539,  Joachim  II. 
formally  and  publicly  threw  off  the  mask  by  taking  the 
Lutheran  communion  at  the  hands  of  the  newly  converted 
Bishop  of  Brandenburg.  In  the  course  of  an  additional 
n/  three  years  all  the  necessary  changes  were  made,  the  mon¬ 
asteries  dissolved,  the  chief  power  in  religious  affairs  placed 
in  the  hands  of  a  consistory.  Not  that  Joachim  II.  was  a 
man  who  would  have  followed  his  religious  convictions,  had 
they  not  guided  him  in  the  line  of  his  advantage ;  it  was 
well  known  to  him  that  a  very  large  proportion  of  his  sub¬ 
jects  were  by  this  time  Lutherans,  and  that,  by  taking  this 
J  course,  he  could  induce  the  estates  to  assume  the  heavy 
debts  of  the  crown.  The  steps  by  which  Brandenburg 


The  Refor¬ 
mation 
accepted. 


4 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OP  GERMANY 


The  Cleves 
heritage. 


I 


became  the  bulwark  of  Protestantism  in  the  North  were 
not,  therefore,  greatly  to  her  credit.  Nor  even  after  mak¬ 
ing  his  choice  could  Joachim  II.  bring  himself  to  abandon 
altogether  the  Roman  Catholic  ceremonial ;  he  loved  the 
music,  the  incense,  and  the  fine  garments,  —  predilections 
which  brought  him  more  than  once  into  conflict  with  his 
own  clergy.  One  of  them,  Buchholzer,  complained  to 
Luther,  who  laughed  at  him  for  his  scruples,  and  bade 
him,  so  long  as  liis  master  was  firm  on  the  main  points,  to 
wear  as  many  surplices  as  the  elector  desired,  whether  of 
velvet,  or  of  silk,  or  of  linen,  or  of  all  three  at  once.  “And,” 
the  reformer  went  on,  “  if  it  please  his  Electoral  Highness, 
he  may  leap  and  dance  with  harps,  cymbals,  drums,  and 
bells,  like  David  before  the  tabernacle  of  the  Lord.” 

Thus  far  the  possessions  of  the  House  of  Hohenzollern 
had  been  very  modest  indeed ;  but  two  generations  after 
Joachim,  under  Elector  John  Sigismund,  the  grandfather 
of  the  Great  Elector,  there  came  a  great  change.  Of  the 
acquisitions  to  the  eastward  we  shall  speak  in  another  con¬ 
nection  ;  for  the  present,  it  is  enough  to  trace  the  steps  by 
which  Brandenburg  achieved  three  Rhenish  provinces. 

The  territory  known  as  the  Duchy  of  Cleves  was,  in  real¬ 
ity,  a  conglomeration  of  small  states,  extending  along  both 
sides  of  the  Rhine  from  Remagen  to  Holland,  and  com¬ 
pletely  surrounding  the  great  bishopric  of  Cologne.  In 
addition  to  Cleves  proper,  there  were  Julier,  Berg,  Mark, 
and  Ravensburg,  which  had  been  in  one  hand  for  exactty 
a  hundred  years.  The  situation  of  these  lands,  so  readily 
accessible  from  France,  from  the  Spanish  Netherlands,  and 
from  Holland,  would  have  rendered  them  important,  apart 
from  the  fact  that  they  were  naturally  very  fertile,  and 
even  then  centres  of  a  busy  trade.  Julier  was  and  is 
responsible  for  much  of  the  commercial  product  that  is 
known  to  the  world  as  “brown  Holland.”  Already,  for 


5 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  PRUSSIAN  MONARCHY 

many  years  before  the  death  of  the  mad  Duke  of  Cleves, 
John  William,  who  was  the  last  male  of  his  line,  there  had 
been  claimants  to  the  regency,  and  ultimately  to  the  crown, 
as  numerous  as  the  lands  which  composed  the  heritage. 
Duke  William,  the  father  of  John  William,  had  tried  to 
forestall  the  present  difficulty  by  drawing  up  a  document, 
accepted  and  sworn  to  by  all  of  his  children,  which  ap¬ 
pointed  the  eldest  daughter,  Maria  Leonora^  and  her  heirs, 
the  rightful  successors  to  the  childish  imbecile  whose  reign, 
it  was  assumed,  would  be  but  short.  Maria  Leonora  her¬ 
self  had  no  sons,  but  her  daughter  had  married  the  young 
Brandenburg  elector,  and  to  him  she  delegated  all  her 
rights.  Immediately  on  hearing  of  the  death  of  John 
William,  which  took  place  at  last  in  1609,  John  Sigismund 
sent  to  take  formal  possession  of  the  vacant  lands,  with  all 
the  pomp  and  ceremony  that  were  known  to  the  age.  In 
the  presence  of  a  notary,  his  envoy  seized  the  great  ring 
on  the  gate  of  the  chancery  building  in  Cleves,  opened  it, 
entered,  and  laid  claim  to  all  the  lands  that  could  be  seen 
from  the  windows,  as  well  as  to  all  that  had  been  admin¬ 
istered  from  Cleves  as  a  centre ;  he  then  nailed  up  the 
Brandenburg  coat  of  arms  on  the  front  of  the  great  edifice. 
It  had  been  arranged  that  the  same  proceedings  should  be 
gone  through  with  in  Diisseldorf  for  Berg  and  Julier;  but 
here,  to  his  astonishment,  John  Sigismund’s  envoy  found 
on  his  arrival  that  he  was  too  late.  Envoys  of  the  Count 
Palatine  of  Neuburg,  Wolfgang  William,  son  of  a  younger 
sister  of  Maria  Leonora,  were  already  at  work,  Pfalz-Neu- 
burg’s  contention  being  that  the  whole  duchy  was  a  “  man- 
fief,”  and  that,  in  default  of  male  heirs  on  the  elder  sister’s 
part,  the  succession  fed  to  himself.  Thus  was  started  a 
cause  celebre  of  the  seventeenth  century,  and  one  that  was 
not  to  be  entirely  settled  un  :1  the  Congress  of  Vienna,  in 
1815.  In  view  of  a  common  danger  that  threatened  them 


6 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


from  other  powers,  Pfalz -Neuburg  and  the  elector  came  to 

* 

a  temporary  agreement,  by  which  the  elector  was  to  admin¬ 
ister  the  affairs  of  Cleves,  Mark,  and  Ravensburg  —  which 
he  never  after,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  let  out  of  his  hands  — 
and  Pfalz-Neuburg  was  to  administer  those  of  Julier  and 
Berg. 

Austria,  The  circumstance  that  both  of  these  pretendants  were 

Spam,  and  protestant,  and  that,  by  the  provisions  of  the  Peace  of 

gides  Augsburg  the  ruler  ot  a  land  might  impose  his  own  reli- 

gion  on  his  subjects,  awakened  a  great  fear  in  Austria  and 
in  Spain.  The  loss  of  this  territory  would  be  a  serious 
calamity  for  the  Catholic  church;  there  was  risk  of  the 
neighboring  Cologne,  which  had  once  or  twice  wavered, 
becoming  Protestantized,  and  of  the  Spanish  Netherlands 
being  completely  cut  off  from  the  Westphalian  bishoprics. 
The  Hapsburg  emperor,  accordingly,  Rudolph  II.,  as  a 
last  resort  brought  forward  a  claim  of  his  own :  land,  the 
title  of  which  was  in  dispute,  belonged  for  the  time  being 
to  the  crown.  Rudolph  sent  as  commissioner  his  own 
brother,  Leopold,  and  bade  him  establish  himself  in  Julier 
and  carry  on  the  administration.  To  no  man  could  such 
an  errand  have  been  more  agreeable  than  to  this  ambitious 
prince,  who  dreamed  of  an  alliance  with  Spain,  the  Pope, 
and  the  Catholic  League,  which  should  enable  him,  after 
completing  his  present  task,  to  march  to  Bohemia,  stifle 
that  discontent  which,  as  we  know  now,  was  to  culminate 
in  the  outbreak  of  the  Thirty  Years’  War,  and  perhaps 
place  the  Bohemian  crown  on  his  own  head.  But  the 
Protestant  holders  of  Cleves  and  Ju1  ,ould  also  boast  of 
strong  support.  Henry  IY.  of  T  je —  though  mainly 
driven  to  make  war  on  Spain  b  j  mad  desire  to  have 
back  his  mistress,  whom  her  b  id,  the  Prince  of  Conde, 
had  placed  under  the  care  j  Spanish  government  in 
the  Netherlands  — was  ab1  >ring  about  a  league  between 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  PRUSSIAN  MONARCHY 


7 


England,  Holland,  Savoy,  and  the  Protestant  Union.  By 
the  summer  of  1610,  it  was  hoped,  an  army  of  thirty-three 
thousand  men  would  be  before  the  walls  of  the  town  of 
Julier.  Young  Christian  of  Anhalt  was  to  be  commander- 
in-chief  of  the  combined  forces,  while  Henry  himself  was 
to  march  at  the  head  of  the  French  troops. 

The  dagger  of  Ravaillac  frustrated  all  these  plans ;  the 
Catholics  had  raised  an  army  against  which  Henry  was  on 
the  point  of  marching,  when  this  fanatic,  incensed  at  the 
thought  of  a  French  king  in  league  with  heretics,  put  an 
end  to  the  monarch’s  life.  On  Henry’s  shoulders  had 
rested  the  burden  of  the  war,  his  death  betokened  a  com¬ 
plete  change  of  policy  in  France.  One  by  one  the  allied 
powers  fell  away,  and  Pfalz-Neuburg  and  Brandenburg 
were  left  in  Cleves- Julier  to  their  own  devices  ;  they  drove 
out  the  Archduke  Leopold  and  administered  the  duchies 
themselves,  though  in  no  great  mutual  concord.  One  day 
Pfalz-Neuburg  had  the  hardihood  to  suggest  that  he  should 
marry  a  daughter  of  the  elector,  and  that  her  dowry 
should  be  the  disputed  provinces.  The  result  was  a 
quarrel,  fierce,  sharp,  and  full  of  consequences.  John 
Sigismund  is  said  to  have  boxed  the  ears  of  the  audacious 
youth,  whom  he  considered  far  below  himself  in  rank,  and 
Wolfgang  William  soon  afterward,  by  way  of  revenge 
and  in  order  to  gain  the  support  of  Spain  and  Bavaria, 
turned  Catholic  and  married  the  sister  of  the  Bavarian 
Duke.  John  Sigismund  himself,  ostensibly  to  gain  rest 
for  his  conscience,  but  in  reality,  so  far  as  can  be  judged, 
in  order  to  stand  well  with  the  Dutch,  went  over  to  Cal¬ 
vinism.  Here  was  a  complication  of  vast  importance  for 
the  future  of  the  electorate :  the  ruling  house  pledged  to  a 
faith  that  was  almost  as  much  hated  as  Catholicism  by  the 
majority  of  the  subjects.  The  bitter  rivalry  between  the 
two  denominations,  the  “  reformed,”  as  they  were  called, 


John  Sigis¬ 
mund  be¬ 
comes  a 
Calvinist. 


8 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Branden¬ 
burg  in 
the  Thirty- 
Years’ 

War. 


and  the  Lutherans,  was  to  endure  almost  down  to  our  own 
day.  John  Sigismund  himself  incurred  the  unbending 
opposition  of  his  more  powerful  estates.  Whenever  he 
made  a  demand  for  money,  his  defection  from. the  estab¬ 
lished  religion  was  cast  up  in  his  face.  At  one  local  diet 
after  another  complaints  and  resolutions  on  the  subject 
were  brought  forward ;  while  openly  from  the  pulpit  the 
elector  was  branded  as  an  apostate.  A  tumult  in  Berlin 
ended  in  the  storming  of  the  houses  of  the  Calvinistic 
preachers.  But  John  Sigismund  was  fully  able  to  hold 
his  own.  44  A  cow  is  liker  to  a  windmill  than  your  actions 
to  your  office,”  he  wrote  to  the  clergy  of  Kiistrin,  44  and 
your  conscience  shows  such  gaps  that  a  coach-and-four 
could  drive  through !  ” 

The  reason  for  all  this  animosity  was,  that  Calvinism 
and  Lutheranism  had  come  to  be  the  banners  under  which 
liberals  fought  against  conservatives,  and  the  nobles  of 
Brandenburg  resented  the  alliance  of  their  king  with  a 
religious  party  which  so  directly  encouraged  republican 
ideas.  Just  so  the  Calvinism  of  the  44  Winter  King”  had 
estranged  the  upper  classes  in  Bohemia.  The  most  favor¬ 
able  ground  that  the  new  teachings  encountered  had  been 
in  the  republics  of  Switzerland  and  Holland.  Partly  on 
account  of  her  religious  disunity,  but  also  for  many  other 
reasons,  the  outbreak  of  the  Thirty  Years’  War  found 
Brandenburg  utterly  unprepared  to  play  any  r61e  at  all  on 
the  stage  of  general  affairs.  Her  elector  at  the  time,  John 
Sigismund’s  son,  George  William,  was  one  of  the  weakest 
to  whom  history  can  point.  His  panegyrists  might  say  at 
the  time  that  majesty  44  radiated  from  his  face,”  but  his  own 
descendant,  Frederick  the  Great,  when  drawing  the  sum 
of  this  life,  knew  better ;  in  his  memoirs  he  calls  his  ances¬ 
tor  44  a  sovereign  incapable  of  governing,  with  a  minister 
who  was  traitor  to  his  country.”  This  minister,  Schwarz* 


the  rise  of  the  Prussian  monarchy 


9 


enburg,  a  Catholic  supposed  to  have  been  in  the  bigoted 
Ferdinand  II. ’s  pay,  frustrated  every  good  and  progressive 
measure  that  was  by  any  chance  brought  forward.  He  it 
was  who,  at  the  time  of  the  terrible  Restitution  Edict, 
induced  George  William  to  dally  so  long  with  Gustavus 
Adolphus ;  he  it  was  who,  in  1635,  gathered  the  elector 
into  the  fold  of  the  Prague  Peace.  The  shame  of  it  all 
was  that  scarcely  an  effort  was  made  to  protect  Branden¬ 
burg’s  boundaries ;  every  army  in  turn  marched  through 
the  land  unmolested,  or  went  into  winter  quarters,  as  it 
pleased.  There  was  some  justification  for  neutrality,  but 
this  was  a  weak,  nerveless  neutrality,  during  which  the 
country  suffered  the  worst  that  unbridled  enemies  could 
inflict.  The  finances  went  from  bad  to  worse,  although  the 
extravagance  at  court  continued  as  before ;  the  elector, 
touched  by  no  misfortune  that  did  not  immediately  concern 
himself,  showed  and  encouraged  an  unseemly  levity  when 
talking  of  the  most  serious  affairs. 

George  William’s  position,  it  must  be  acknowledged, 
could  not  well  have  been  more  difficult.  Allied  as  he  was 
by  family  ties  to  Gustavus  Adolphus  on  the  one  hand  and 
to  the  “  Winter  King  ”  on  the  other,  his  own  particular  in¬ 
terests  led  him  to  the  side  of  the  emperor,  —  a  complicated 
state  of  affairs  that  caused  him  to  follow  his  own  natural 
bent  and  adopt  no  consistent  policy  whatever.  At  the 
time  of  his  death,  in  1640,  the  land  was  in  such  an  utterly 
wretched  and  hopeless  condition  —  with  untilled  fields  and 
great  gaps  of  ruined  houses  in  the  towns  and  villages  — that 
the  estates  stormed  the  new  elector  with  requests  to  put 
an  end  at  all  costs  to  the  miserable  war.  This  he  did  by 
abandoning  his  companions  of  the  Prague  Peace,  and  mak¬ 
ing  his  own  agreement  with  Sweden. 

The  young  Frederick  William,  known  as  the  Great 
Elector,  was  the  greatest  contrast  to  his  father  that  could 


10 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


the  Great 
Elector. 


\ 


The  acces-  possibly  be  imagined.  Strong,  unhesitating,  and  clear - 
sion^of  V/  minded  by  nature,  he  had  besides  enjoyed  the  advantages 
of  a  liberal  education  in  a  foreign  country.  Sent  at  the 
age  of  fifteen  to  the  university  town  of  Leyden,  he  had 
remained  in  the  Netherlands  some  four  years,  enjoying  an 
intellectual  atmosphere  far  different  from  that  of  his  own 
impoverished,  misgoverned,  and  unrespected  land.  These 
were  the  days  of  Peter  Paul  Rubens,  of  Rembrandt,  and 
of  Van  Dyke ;  of  the  great  jurists  who  had  worshipped  at 
the  feet  of  Hugo  Grotius ;  and  of  the  philosopher  Des¬ 
cartes,  whose  works  were  published  in  Holland  when  for¬ 
bidden  in  France.  Here  the  young  Hohenzollern  had 
learned  to  know  and  appreciate  a  really  flourishing  state, 
where  manufactures  throve,  and  where  every  available  piece 
of  land  was  under  cultivation,  even  if  it  had  previously 
been  a  marsh  or  a  fen.  On  his  accession  to  the  electoral 
throne  of  Brandenburg  he  was  possessed  of  two  clearly 
"|  defined  aims:  to  build  up  agriculture  and  trade,  and  to 
4-4  protect  them  with  a  strong  army.  If  he  progressed  but 
slowly  in  both  these  matters,  his  success  in  another  direc¬ 
tion,  in  that  of  diplomacy,  was  the  more  apparent.  It  was 
in  part  due  to  him  that  the  minor  German  states  had  inde¬ 
pendent  representation  in  the  great  peace  congress  at 
Miinster  and  Osnabriick,  and  almost  wholly  his  work  that 
Calvinists  were  allowed  to  partake  of  the  blessings  of  the 
Westphalian  Treaty.  His  efforts,  indeed,  at  this  congress 
to  rescue  Pomerania,  Brandenburg’s  lawful  birthright,  from 
the  fangs  of  Sweden,  proved  of  no  avail ;  but  by  unfolding 
all  the  wiliness  that  was  one  of  his  chief  characteristics,  he 
obtained  in  compensation  the  bishoprics  of  Halberstadt, 
Minden,  and  Cammin,  the  county  of  Hohenstein,  and  the 
succession  to  Magdeburg,  possessions  which  served  as 
a  bridge  to  Cleves,  Mark,  and  Ravensburg,  and  made  it 
easier  to  unite  these  alien  districts  into  one  great  whole. 


* 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  PRUSSIAN  MONARCHY 


11 


In  the  meantime,  another  Hohenzollern  possession,  lying 
entirely  outside  of  the  boundaries  of  the  Holy  Roman 
Empire,  was  beginning  to  assume  immense  importance. 
We  must  consider  in  some  detail  how  it  became  finally 
so  amalgamated  with  the  Mark  Brandenburg  as  to  give  its 
name  to  the  whole  new  state.  Prussia,  or  Bo-Russia,  the 
once  flourishing  land  of  the  famous  Teutonic  Order,  had 
been,  since  the  Treaty  of  Thorn,  in  1466,  completely  under 
the  heel  of  Poland.  One  half  of  it,  West  Prussia,  had 
been  actually  incorporated  in  that  land,  while,  with  regard 
to  the  portion  that  remained,  the  grand  masters  of  the 
order,  each  in  turn,  were  obliged  to  take  a  humiliating 
oath  of  vassalage.  To  this  state  of  affairs,  after  half  a 
century  of  servitude,  an  effort  was  made  by  the  order 
itself  to  apply  a  remedy.  The  cry  was  raised  that  the  land 
so  long  subject  to  Poland  was  rightfully  a  fief  of  the  em¬ 
pire.  In  their  palmier  days  the  knights  would  never  have 
acknowledged  it ;  but  now,  in  order  to  enforce  their  view, 
they  determined  to  elect  as  grand  master  some  German 
prince  of  influence,  who  would  make  it  his  chief  care  to 
free  them  from  the  Polish  yoke.  Their  choice  fell  on 
Albert,  head  of  the  Culmbach-Baireuth  line  of  Hohenzol¬ 
lern,  and  his  first  step  was  to  refuse  to  Poland  the  customary 
act  of  homage.  In  the  beginning  all  went  well;  Albert 
was  encouraged  by  the  Emperor  Maximilian,  by  the  other 
German  princes,  and  by  many  of  the  knights  themselves, 
who,  grown  rich  and  powerful,  were  scattered  in  different 
commanderies  throughout  the  empire.  But  it  soon  be¬ 
came  apparent  that  the  promises  had  been  but  glittering 
generalities,  and  that  of  actual  assistance  little  or  none 
was  forthcoming.  For  eleven  years  Albert  labored  con¬ 
scientiously,  and  even  succeeded,  largely  by  sacrificing  his 
own  private  property,  in  raising  an  army  of  eight  thou¬ 
sand  mercenaries,  with  which  he  attacked  the  immeasur- 


The  secular¬ 
ization 
of  the 
Teutonic 
firder. 


V 


12 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Coenfeoff¬ 
ment  with 
Prussia. 


ably  greater  forces  of  Poland.  He  failed  signally,  was 
reduced  to  great  straits,  and  finally,  after  in  vain  storming 
the  empire  for  aid,  took  a  step  that  from  many  quarters 
drew  down  upon  him  bitter  opprobrium. 

The  Reformation  had  made  great  progress  within  the 
lands  of  the  order ;  many  of  the  knights  had  become  con¬ 
vinced  of  the  truth  of  its  teachings,  and  Albert  himself 
finally  succumbed  to  the  general  trend.  Appealing  to 
Luther  to  know  what  he  should  do  with  the  trust  that  had 
been  imposed  upon  him,  he  was  told  that  in  its  present 
condition  the  order  was  “  a  thing  serviceable  neither  to 
God  nor  to  man,”  and  had  better  cease  to  exist.  The  out¬ 
come  of  it  was  that  Albert  pronounced  the  order’s  disso¬ 
lution,  reorganized  it  into  a  secular  duchy  with  himself  at 
its  head,  made  the  ducal  dignity  hereditary  in  his  own 
family,  and  eventually  did  homage,  but  in  a  purely  secular 
capacity,  to  Poland,  whose  king  agreed  to  defend  him 
against  all  the  world ;  those  of  the  knights  who  followed 
him  were  made  feudal  proprietors  with  sub  vassals.  The 
German  division  of  the  order,  indeed,  under  their  own 
Teutschmeister  at  Mergentheim,  raised  a  hue  and  cry  at 
various  diets,  and  caused  Charles  V.  to  threaten  the  author 
of  such  innovations  with  severe  punishments,  and  even  to 
put  him  in  the  ban  of  the  empire  —  a  weapon,  however,  that 
by  this  time  was  well  blunted.  Albert  lived  down  all 
opposition,  and  when  he  died  his  like-named  son  succeeded 
him  without  further  disturbance. 

Brandenburg  and  Prussia  were  now  alike  in  the  hands 
of  Hohenzollerns,  though  of  different  branches  of  the 
family.  The  next  step  was  to  gain  from  the  king  of  Poland 
coenfeoffment,  or  the  right  of  the  two  lines  to  enter  into  a 
mutual-heritage  compact,  by  which,  on  the  extinction  of 
the  house  of  Culmbach-Baireuth,  Prussia  was  to  pass  to 
the  electoral  branch.  It  was  Joachim  II., '  he  sponsor  of 

c4 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  PRUSSIAN  MONARCHY 


13 


the  Reformation,  who  at  last  succeeded  in  doing  this.  He 
had  married  a  Polish  princess,  and  he  prevailed  upon  his 
father-in-law  and  suzerain,  in  1568,  to  grant  him  the  much-  ' 
coveted  reversion.  Toward  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  cen¬ 
tury  the  long-looked-for  contingency  became  more  and 
more  imminent.  Albert  II.  of  Prussia  had  no  sons,  but 
two  daughters ;  of  these,  to  make  matters  doubly  sure, 

Elector  Joachim  Frederick  married  one,  his  son  John  Sig- 
ismund,  for  his  second  wife,  the  other.  Albert  II.,  long 
a  hopeless  imbecile,  died  at  last  in  1618,  and  John  Sigis- 
mund,  only  four  years  after  securing  Cleves,  Mark,  and~j 
Ravensburg,  fell  heir  also  to  Prussia.  It  remained  to  be 
seen  what  his  grandson,  the  Great  Elector,  could  do  in  the 
way  of  lifting  the  ominous  shadow  of  Polish  supremacy. 

To  this  object,  after  the  Peace  of  Westphalia,  the  Great  The  Polish- 
Elector  devoted  his  chief  attention.  If  he  achieved  it  by  Swedlsh 
a  tortuous  and  somewhat  equivocal  policy,  the  only  excuse 
is  that  duplicity  was  the  key-note  of  seventeenth-century 
statecraft,  and  that  the  only  difference  between  Frederick 
William  and  the  princes  with  whom  he  had  to  deal,  was  in 
point  of  cleverness.  Well,  indeed,  has  this  elector  been 
likened  to  the  old  familiar  Reinicke  Fuchs  ;  at  one  moment 
in  really  desperate  straits,  the  next  moment  we  find  him 
master  of  the  situation.  Nor  does  he  ever  relax  his  grim  de¬ 
termination  to  make  his  land  respected  among  the  nations ; 
unmercifully  does  he  tax  his  impoverished  subjects  to  pay  w 
for  his  army  and  his  state  improvements.  He  is  reduced 
at  times  to  borrowing  small  sums  right  and  left ;  he  even 
falls  into  the  old  and  fatal  error  of  inflating  the  currency. 

And  with  it  all,  through  policy  and  not  through  love  of 
luxury,  he  is  obliged  to  keep  up  a  magnificence  at  court 
out  of  all  proportion  to  the  resources  of  the  land.  Foreign 
princes  are  to  be  shown  that  an  elector  of  Brandenburg 
and  duke  of  Prussia  is  not  in  any  way  their  inferior.  In 


14 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


his  designs  for  becoming  free  from  the  yoke  of  vassalage, 
Frederick  William  was  assisted  by  a  war  that  broke  out 
between  his  liege  lord  of  Poland  and  that  Charles  Gustavus 
of  Pfalz-Zweibriicken  in  whose  favor  the  daughter  of 
Gustavus  Adolphus  had  just  abdicated  the  Swedish  throne. 
John  Casimir  had  disputed  the  new  monarch’s  right,  and 
had  been  told  significantly  that  Charles  Gustavus  would 
prove  it  by  no  less  than  thirty  thousand  witnesses.  Sweden 
was  only  too  glad  to  employ  in  a  foreign  war  her  soldatesca , 
withdrawn  from  German  soil  by  the  terms  of  the  Peace  of 
Westphalia,  and  always  troublesome.  An  army  was  soon 
despatched  to  Poland  by  way  of  Pomerania.  The  elector, 
across  whose  lands  the  Swedes  passed  without  asking  leave, 
was  in  a  quandary ;  as  vassal  of  Poland  he  was  bound  in 
honor  to  give  assistance  to  that  power,  but  if  he  did  the 
enemy  would  sack  his  towns.  He  tried  to  remain  neutral, 
but  that  would  not  suffice ;  Charles  Gustavus,  whose  first 
campaign  was  phenomenally  successful,  returned  with  a  por¬ 
tion  of  his  troops,  and  demanded  categorically  whether  the 
elector  intended  to  be  friend  or  foe.  Having,  in  his  efforts 
to  gain  allies,  met  everywhere  with  a  not-undeserved  mis¬ 
trust,  there  was  nothing  left  for  Frederick  William  but  to 
make  what  terms  he  could.  He  closed  at  Konigsberg,  in 
1656,  the  first  of  his  long  series  of  treaties  with  regard  to 
Prussia,  repudiating  the  Polish  suzerainty,  but  becoming 
on  even  harder  terms  the  vassal  of  Sweden.  All  harbors 
were  to  be  opened  to  Swedish  vessels,  tolls  and  customs 
were  to  be  equally  divided,  a  sum  of  money  was  to  be  paid 
at  each  investiture,  and  a  contingent  sent  to  the  royal  army. 
But  suddenly  the  whole  aspect  of  affairs  changed,  and 
Sweden  was  no  longer  in  the  ascendent.  John  Casimir, 
reenforced  by  the  Tartars  and  Cossacks  under  the  hetman 
Chmieliecki,  succeeded  ii  using  the  Poles  to  one  last 
despairing  effort.  War  ti  i  death  was  declared  against 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  PRUSSIAN  MONARCHY 


15 


this  foreigner,  this  Charles  Gustavus  who  blasphemed  God 
by  violating  and  plundering  churches  and  monasteries;  the 
Virgin  Mary  was  solemnly  proclaimed  queen  of  Poland, 
and  a  day  set  apart  on  which  to  worship  her  in  her  new 
capacity.  A  great  confidence  of  victory  seized  on  the 
people;  John  Casimir  boasted  that  his  Tartars  would 
breakfast  on  Brandenburgers  and  Swedes.  With  an  army 
of  sixty  thousand,  he  marched  against  Warsaw,  drove  out 
the  hostile  garrison,  and  possessed  himself  of  the  rich 
treasure  accumulated  by  the  enemy. 

By  Frederick  William  the  new  crisis  was  welcomed  as  Battle  of 
an  opportunity  for  improving  his  footing  with  Sweden.  In  Warsaw 
the  treaty  of  Marienburg  he  offered  to  take  the  field  on  the 
Swedish  side,  if  Charles  Gustavus  would  guarantee  to  him 
Posen,  Kalisch,  and  other  Polish  provinces.  Then  he  set  to 
work  to  show  what  his  alliance  was  worth,  and  found  his 
opportunity  in  the  remarkable  three  days’  battle  waged  for 
the  recapture  of  Warsaw.  Never  did  new  troops  more 
brilliantly  sustain  their  baptism  of  fire  ;  by  means  of  bold 
manoeuvres,  by  changing  the  point  of  attack  in  the  teeth 
of  the  heavy  fire,  the  Swedish-Brandenburg  army  finally 
routed  an  enemy  which  outnumbered  it  four  to  one. 

Warsaw  was  taken  and  plundered,  and  many  of  its  pictures 
and  statues  found  their  way  to  Berlin,  not  to  speak  of  the 
rich  columns  that  went  to  adorn  the  palace  of  the  electress 
at  Oranienburg. 

It  did  not  suit  Frederick  William  completely  to  annihi¬ 
late  the  Polish  power.  He  prevented  the  Swedes  from 
following  up  their  victory,  and  himself  withdrew  to  Prussia, 
under  pretext  of  defending  that  province  against  the  Lithu¬ 
anians.  The  Poles  rallied  once  more,  and  while  Charles 
Gustavus  was  absent,  inflicting  a  severe  chastisement  on 
the  Danes,  retook  Warsaw  and  Kalisch.  The  elector  per¬ 
ceived  how,  in  this  emergency  more  than  ever,  Sweden 


16 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


would  need  his  alliance,  and  took  the  opportunity  of  screwing 
his  terms  to  the  highest  point.  In  the  Treaty  of  Labiau,  the 
third  in  this  eventful  year  of  1656,  he  induced  Sweden  to  rec¬ 
ognize  him  as  “supreme,  absolute,  and  sovereign”  duke  of 
Prussia.  But  he  knew  well  that  this  guarantee  alone  would 
not  suffice ;  that  the  Poles,  reenforced  by  Tartars  and  Rus¬ 
sians,  were  quite  as  much  to  be  feared  as  the  Swedes;  instead 
of  going  to  war,  however,  he  preferred  to  gain  his  end  by 
peaceful  means.  Five  days  after  the  Treaty  of  Labiau  he 
commenced  secretly  negotiating  with  the  Poles  for  a  similar 
acknowledgment  on  their  part,  offering  to  renounce,  in  re¬ 
turn,  the  Polish  provinces  which  Sweden  had  assured  to 
him  by  the  Treaty  of  Marienburg.  It  was,  of  course, 
double  dealing  of  the  rankest  kind.  Of  the  new  treaty, 
signed  at  Wehlau  in  165T,  Sweden  was  to  be  kept  in  igno¬ 
rance,  until  the  elector  could  make  sure  that  Austria  would 
help  him  in  the  event  of  a  war  with  his  recent  ally.  The 
old  Emperor  Ferdinand  III.,  had  just  died,  and  Frederick 
William’s  vote  had  promised  to  become  the  decisive  one  in 
the  new  election,  for  the  reason  that  the  electoral  college 
would  otherwise  be  evenly  divided.  It  was  his  doing, 
then,  that  Leopold,  who  was  to  fill  the  imperial  throne  for 
the  next  half-century,  was  finally  chosen,  and,  naturally, 
the  favor  was  returned  by  a  close  alliance. 

The  war  with  Sweden  soon  became  an  actuality.  The 
elector  welcomed  it,  for  he  well  foresaw  that  it  would 
prove  the  last  step  in  securing  the  independence  of  Prussia. 
The  emperor  agreed  to  furnish  10,000  and  Poland  T000 
men.  A  manifesto  was  issued,  addressed  to  all  Germans, 
urging  them  to  rise  and  free  the  Rhine,  Weser,  Elbe, 
and  Oder,  which  were  nothing  else  than  “prisoners  of 
foreign  nations.”  Frederick  William  himself  led  the  com¬ 
bined  forces  to  a  series  of  brilliant  victories.  The  Swedes 
were  driven  back  from  every  one  of  their  recently  con- 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  PRUSSIAN  MONARCHY 


17 


quered  positions  in  Denmark ;  the  whole  of  Pomerania  was 
occupied;  while  at  the  same  time  the  garrisons  in  Poland 
were  forced  to  surrender.  But,  much  to  the  elector’s 
chagrin,  a  new  power  appeared  upon  the  scene,  and,  osten¬ 
sibly  as  champion  of  the  Westphalian  Peace,  ordered  the 
cessation  of  hostilities.  Louis  XIV.  and  Mazarin,  having  C 

by  the  Peace  of  the  Pyrenees,  in  1659,  concluded  their  long 
war  with  Spain,  were  able  to  turn  their  attention  elsewhere. 

It  was  intolerable  to  them  that  Brandenburg-Prussia  should 
go  on  with  its  career  of  conquest,  and  they  brought  about 
a  peace  congress,  which  met  at  Oliva,  a  monastery  near 
Danzig.  Louis  XIV.  himself  drew  up  an  army  of  40,000 
men  on  the  French  frontier,  to  emphasize  his  demand  that 


all  her  former  possessions  in  Pomerania  should  be  restored 
to  Sweden.  Could  Frederick  William  have  trusted  his 
allies,  he  never  would  have  yielded;  but  Austria  and 
Poland,  too,  were  against  his  making  territorial  acquisi¬ 
tions.  He  was  obliged  to  content  himself,  therefore,  with 
the  general  acknowledgment  by  the  congress  of  his  free 
sovereignty  over  Prussia.  In  itself  no  mean  advantage. 

The  Peace  of  Oliva  placed  the  claim  of  the  Hohenzollerns 
above  assault;  and  it  marks  the  raising  of  their  united  terri¬ 
tories  to  the  rank  of  a  European  power.  Not  as  yet,  indeed, 
a  power  that  was  either  greatly  respected  or  greatly  feared ; 
several  architects  were  to  work  at  the  structure  before  it 
could  reach  perfection. 

As  yet,  too,  the  long-coveted  sovereignty  had  only  been  The  strug- 
secured  in  relation  to  foreign  powers.  Little  could  the  Sle  witl1  the 

•  ^  estates  of 

elector  have  imagined  how  fierce  an  internal  struggle  re-  Prussia 
mained  to  be  carried  on.  What  he  himself  described  as 
the  hardest  experiences  of  his  life  were  still  to  be  endured, 
for  the  Prussian  nobles  and  burghers  sturdily  and  stead- 
fastly  refused  to  play  the  part  assigned  them  in  his  general  5 
scheme  of  government.  Little  did  they  care  for  Frederick 


VOIy.  II  -  C 


18 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


William’s  aspiration  to  shine  in  the  concert  of  European 
rulers.  They  were  now  to  learn,  however,  to  their  own 
unspeakable  wrath  and  misery,  the  meaning  of  “absolut¬ 
ism”  and  “sovereign  rights.”  In  their  new  lord  they 
found  a  man  of  iron,  thoroughly  determined  to  maintain 
the  position  he  had  taken.  “  I  desire  nothing  unreason¬ 
able,”  he  once  told  them,  “  but  I  mean  to  be  master,  and 
you  must  be  my  subjects ;  then  I  will  show  you  that  I  love 
you  as  a  father  loves  his  children.”  No  sooner  had  Fred¬ 
erick  William  sent  his  stadtholder  to  Prussia  than  the  con¬ 
flict  broke  out.  The  estates  took  the  ground  that  the 
whole  transaction  with  Poland  was  null  and  void,  from 
\  the  fact  that  their  own  consent  had  neither  been  asked  nor 
given.  Were  they  to  be  bartered  about  like  so  many 
apples  and  pears?  They  had  rather  enjoyed  the  former 
rule,  which  had  left  them  much  to  their  own  devices  ;  be¬ 
fore  they  would  consent  now  to  do  homage  to  their  new 
head,  they  were  determined  to  have  a  thorough  under¬ 
standing  with  Poland,  and  also  to  obtain  a  guarantee  that 
their  rights  and  privileges  should  be  respected.  But  these 
same  rights  and  privileges  were  such  as  the  elector  neither 
would  nor  could  grant ;  his  glance  was  fixed  on  the  general 
good  of  the  whole  state,  that  of  these  Prussians  on  their 
own  especial  comfort  and  advantage.  No  taxes  were  to  be 
levied,  they  claimed,  no  wars  or  alliances  entered  into 
against  their  will ;  in  fact,  in  all  important  matters  they 
were  to  cooperate,  and,  in  order  that  their  position  might 
be  the  stronger,  they  demanded  the  right  to  assemble  of  their 
own  accord  at  stated  intervals.  For  Frederick  William,  a 
standing  army,  supported  by  regular  money  contributions, 
wa§"a  prime  necessity.  The  estates,  on  the  other  hand, 
fearing  that  such  a  force  might  be  used  for  their  own  coer¬ 
cion,  clamored  for  the  dismissal  of  the  troops,  the  razing  of 
y  certain  fortifications,  and,  above  all,  the  abolishment  of  the 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  PRUSSIAN  MONARCHY  19 

excise  duties  from  which  the  military  expenses  were  to  be 

paid\ 

This  dislike  to  being  taxed  was  a  deep-rooted  sentimentARoth’s  con- 
among  all  the  German  nobles  of  the  eighteenth  century.  sPira°y- 
The  old  feudal  idea  still  survived,  that  it  was  dignified  to 
fight  for  one’s  lord  and  master,  but  not  to  untie  for  him 
one’s  purse-strings  except  on  extraordinary  occasions. 
Characteristic  on  this  point  is  the  report  of  the  elector’s 
own  privy  councillors,  who  opposed  his  plan  for  a  new 
property  tax  and  a  more  rigid  form  of  assessment  in  Prus¬ 
sia  :  “  It  is  very  hard,”  they  say,  “  to  treat  a  liberum  et  in- 
genuum  hominem  so  roughly,  and  to  force  him  ad  pandenda 
patrimonii  sua  arcana ,”  into  opening  up  the  secret  places 
where  he  keeps  his  patrimony !  When,  at  the  local  diet 
which  assembled  at  Konigsberg  in  1661,  it  was  announced 
that  the  elector  would  admit  of  no  dispute  concerning 
what  he  considered  his  sovereign  rights;  when  he  refused 
to  disarm,  on  the  ground  that  he  would  be  crushed  by 
other  powers,  the  excitement  of  the  people  passed  all 
bounds.  Religious  differences,  Jesuit  intrigues,  and  secret 
dealings  with  Poland,  made  the  movement  really  danger¬ 
ous.  This  “reformed”  elector,  it  was  said,  was  going 
to  reduce  the  Prussians  to  absolute  servitude.  Fanatics 
preached  from  the  pulpits  of  Konigsberg  that  all  Lutherans- 
were  to  be  driven  from  their  churches  in  favor  of  Calvinists. 

Under  the  dread  of  such  acts  of  violence,  and  under  the  lead¬ 
ership  of  the  Konigsberg  demagogue  Roth,  a  conspiracy  was 
formed  to  throw  off  the  new  yoke  and  return  to  the  sheltering 
wing  of  Poland ;  in  an  assembly  held  in  the  church  at  Kneip- 
hof  a  solemn  oath  to  this  effect  was  taken.  The  land  was  on 
the  verge  of  civil  war;  the  Konigsbergers  planted  cannon 
on  their  walls,  while  Prince  Radzivill,  the  stadtholder,  drew 
together  what  troops  he  could  muster,  and  called  on  the 
elector  to  come  at  once  if  he  would  save  his  duchy. 


20 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Roth  and 
Kalckstein. 


What  the  personal  influence  of  one  single,  powerful  man 
can  do,  was  clearly  shown  when  Frederick  William,  in 
October,  1662,  arrived  in  Konigsberg,  and  immediately  or¬ 
dered  the  arrest  of  the  agitator,  Roth,  whom,  on  account  of 
his  immense  following  among  the  citizens,  Radzivill  had 
not  dared  to  touch.  This  man  of  the  people  was  as  cour¬ 
ageous  and  determined,  in  his  way,  as  the  elector  himself. 
Seized  in  his  own  house  whence  he  had  scorned  to  flee, 
and  carried  on  horseback  at  a  gallop  to  the  castle  so  as  to 
avoid  the  chances  of  a  rescue,  he  was  tried  for  high  treason 
and  transferred  secretly  to  the  fortress  of  Peitz,  near  Col- 
berg,  where  he  was  kept  under  arrest  to  the  day  of  his 
death.  Years  afterward,  when  present  by  chance  in  Peitz, 
the  elector  caused  the  prisoner  to  be  told  that  if  he  would 
ask  for  pardon  he  might  go  free;  but  Roth  answered 
proudly  that  he  wanted  justice,  not  pardon.  On  the 
whole,  Frederick  William  seems  to  have  feared  Roth  far 
less  than  he  did  Kalckstein,  who  now  fled  to  Warsaw, 
joined  the  Jesuits,  and  was  believed  to  be  the  promoter  of 
every  kind  of  treasonable  plot.  His  person,  too,  was  in 
time  secured,  by  underhanded  means  indeed,  which  ran 
counter  to  the  first  principles  of  international  law.  A 
certain  ruthlessness  has  always  characterized  these  found¬ 
ers  of  powerful  states.  Kalckstein  was  enticed  to  the  Ger¬ 
man  embassy  in  Warsaw,  was  seized,  gagged,  rolled  in  a 
carpet,  and  placed  in  a  wagon  which  drove  him  across  the 
border.  He  was  brought  to  trial,  put  to  the  torture,  and 
finally  executed  —  in  spite  of  the  protests  of  the  king  of 
Poland,  who  would  have  made  a  casus  belli  out  of  the  inci¬ 
dent  had  not  other  considerations  rendered  him  dependent 
on  the  friendship  of  Brandenburg.  Frederick  William 
made  a  scapegoat  of  his  envoy  at  Warsaw,  and  there  the 
matter  ended. 

These  two  men,  Roth  and  Kalckstein,  have  received 

$ 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  PRUSSIAN  MONARCHY 


21 


much  sympathy  from  later  generations,  and  have  been 
likened  to  Pym,  Hampden,  and  other  martyrs  of  English 
parliamentary  history.  It  is  true  they  received  harsh 
treatment,  but,  according  to  every  conceivable  standard, 
they  had  committed  high  treason.  If  Roth  stood  out  and 
suffered  for  popular  and  class  liberties,  it  was  for  liberties 
that  would  have  impaired  the  safety  of  the  state.  It  is  not 
always  best  for  local  patriots  to  have  their  way.  For 
Kalckstein  there  is  absolutely  no  excuse ;  he  had  done  his 
best  to  stir  up  Poland  against  the  existing  form  of  gov¬ 
ernment,  and  had  repeatedly,  in  Warsaw,  threatened  to 
take  the  elector’s  life. 

It  was  a  long  and  weary  task,  this  restoring  order  in 
Prussia,  but  never  did  Frederick  William  display  his 
remarkable  talents  to  better  advantage.  He  knew  well 
when  to  be  severe  —  of  that  there  was  no  doubt  ;  but  he 
now  showed  that  he  also  knew  when  to  persuade  and  to 
propitiate.  Nor  did  he  spare  himself  any  unpleasant 
duties.  “  Since  I  have  been  here,”  he  wrote  to  his  gen¬ 
eral,  Schwerin,  “  I  have  not  enjoyed  one  healthful  hour. 
The  whole  time  I  am  inwardly  enraged,  and  I  swallow 
many  bitter  pills.”  But  he  had  the  satisfaction  of  coming 
at  last  to  an  agreement,  by  which  the  Prussians,  in  return 
for  concessions  more  apparent  than  real,  did  him  homage 
in  the  most  splendid  manner.  Never  had  Konigsberg 
witnessed  such  a  scene  as  on  the  day  of  the  ceremony. 
A  great  platform,  covered  with  a  scarlet  cloth  and  sur¬ 
mounted  by  a  throne,  was  erected  in  the  square ;  coins  of 
gold  and  silver,  struck  off  for  the  occasion,  were  scattered 
among  the  people ;  fireworks,  processions,  and  feastings  of 
all  kinds  signalized  the  important  day. 

The  yoke  of  the  new  ruler  was  still  to  bear  heavily  upon 
the  Prussians ;  the  foreign  wars  of  the  elector  were  fre¬ 
quently  to  tax  his  resources  to  the  utmost,  and  heart- 


99 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Reforms 
and  im¬ 
provements 
of  the  Great 
Elector. 


rending  complaints  often 'found  their  way  to  Berlin.  A 
formal  request  was  once  sent  that  Frederick  William 
would  consider,  not  his  own  necessities,  but  the  bare, 
actual  possibilities  of  the  province.  If  the  elector  was 
inexorable  to  such  appeals,  it  was  not  from  lack  of 
sympathy.  The  founder  of  the  greatness  of  the  Prussian 
state  knew  well  from  personal  experience  what  poverty 
and  hardship  meant.  The  revenues  of  the  Mark,  when  he 
had  first  taken  it  in  hand,  amounted  to  a  paltry  thirty  thou¬ 
sand  thalers;  while  for  the  province  of  Cleves,  there  was 
a  yearly  deficit  of  ten  thousand.  During  the  later  years 
of  the  Thirty  Years’  War  the  court  had  frequently  been 
obliged  to  borrow  sums  as  low  as  fifteen  guldens,  that 
there  might  be  something  to  eat  upon  the  table.  “  There 
is  practically  nothing  left  to  pawn,”  wrote  Schwerin,  the 
master  of  the  household,  after  the  Swedish-Polish  War. 
That  same  war  had  cost  some  eight  million  thalers,  which 
the  elector  was  obliged  to  wring  from  his  reluctant  people. 
Almost  daily  in  Berlin  one  saw  wagons  passing  through 
the  streets  filled  with  the  goods  that  had  been  seized  for 
unpaid  taxes,  and  followed  by  the  unfortunate  owners, 
weeping  and  wringing  their  hands. 

The  quiet  interval  that  elapsed  between  the  Peace  of 
Oliva  and  the  wars  with  Louis  XI Y.  gave  Frederick  Will¬ 
iam  time  to  devote  himself  to  the  permanent  welfare  of 
his  lands.  Frederick  the  Great  spoke  the  truth  when  he 
stood  by  the  opened  coffin  of  his  ancestor,  and,  taking  the 
dead  hand  in  his  own,  said  to  those  around  him,  “  Gentle¬ 
men,  this  man  did  great  things.”  New  sources  of  income 
were  gradually  opened  up,  laws  passed  to  govern  exports 
and  imports,  factories  and  enterprises  of  all  kinds  started. 
In  these  enterprises  the  elector  did  not  hesitate  to  risk  his 
own  private  funds.  Duties  were  charged  on  goods  that  passed 
in  at  the  gates  of  the  cities;  and  the  cities,  for  the  better  pro- 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  PRUSSIAN  MONARCHY 


23 


tection  against  smuggling,  were  surrounded  with  palisades. 
Every  encouragement,  in  the  way  of  reduced  taxation  and 
free  building  materials,  was  offered  to  those  who  would 
restore  ruined  houses  or  cultivate  waste  fields.  On  the 
“domain”  or  crown  lands  no  clergyman  might  perform  the 
marriage  ceremony,  unless  the  bridegroom  could  furnish 
written  proof  that  he  had  planted  six  new  fruit  trees  and 
grafted  six  old  ones.  Colonists  were  called  in  from 
Holland  and  elsewhere,  and  everything  done  to  induce 
them  to  stay.  On  the  improvement  of  his  capital  city  the 
elector  expended  much  time  and  thought,  devising  means 
for  replacing  the  thatched  roofs  by  those  of  better  material, 
and  issuing  orders  to  prevent  the  pigs,  which  abounded 
in  the  city,  from  running  down  the  avenue  where  his  wife, 
Dorothea,  had  planted  her  famous  lindens.  He  succeeded 
so  well  in  his  various  endeavors  that  a  Frenchman  could 
write,  in  1673,  “Everything  seemed  to  me  so  beautiful 
that  I  thought  there  must  be  some  special  opening  in  the 
sky  through  which  the  sun  made  this  region  feel  its  favors.” 
Before  the  end  of  Frederick  William’s  reign  Berlin  had 
more  than  doubled  the  number  of  its  inhabitants.  Nor  were 
greater  projects  lost  sight  of  in  the  midst  of  minor  affairs. 
An  East  India  Company  was  formed,  and  colonies  were 
established  in  Africa ;  but  the  gold  dust  from  them, 
whence  all  the  profit  was  expected  to  come,  did  not, 
according  to  the  elector’s  own  confession,  furnish  one- 
half  the  coin  that  was  spent  in  the  enterprise.  A  regular 
postal  service  was  established  between  such  distant  points 
as  Hamburg  and  Konigsberg,  notwithstanding  the  oppo¬ 
sition  of  the  great  Thurn  and  Taxis  monopoly,  which  had 
been  richly  endowed  with  privileges  by  the  Hapsburg 
emperors.  At  the  expenditure  of  much  labor,  the  canal 
was  put  through  which  joins  the  Spree  with  the  Oder 
near  Frankfort,  thus  opening  up  an  uninterrupted  water 


24 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


H' 


The  Great 
Elector  and 
Louis  XIV. 


course  by  way  of  the  Havel  and  Elbe  to  the  North  Sea. 
It  still  bears  the  name  of  the  Frederick  William  Canal. 
As  the  Spree  is  fifty  feet  higher  than  the  Oder,  it  was 
found  necessary  to  build  a  number  of  locks,  and  in  the 
bed  of  one  of  these,  on  the  day  of  the  opening,  the  elector 
and  his  whole  court  dined  in  state.  Then  the  gates  were 
opened,  the  water  flowed  in,  and  the  first  ship  was  de¬ 
spatched  on  its  course. 

For  the  improvement  of  the  army  neither  effort  nor  expense 
was  spared.  The  chief  problem  the  elector  had  to  cope  with 
was  the  independent  spirit  of  the  officers,  who  considered 
their  regiments  as  their  own  private  property.  By  declaring 
that  they  had  sworn  allegiance  to  the  emperor  and  could 
not  serve  two  masters,  they  sought  to  escape  from  the 
elector’s  jurisdiction ;  Colonel  Rochow  threatened  to  blow 
up  Spandau  on  receiving  a  command  that  was  not  to  his 
liking.  Only  with  considerable  difficulty  did  Frederick 
William  manage  to  get  rid  of  the  worst  elements  in  his 
army,  and  to  fill  their  places  with  new  men.  By  the  year 
1646,  he  had  eight  thousand  good  soldiers  under  arms;  by 
1655,  more  than  three  times  that  number.  It  is  wonderful, 
considering  the  primitive  weapons  of  the  time,  how  much 
this  army  was  able  to  accomplish,  especially  the  cavalry, 
which  learned  to  move  with  incredible  swiftness,  thus  win¬ 
ning  more  than  one  battle  over  forces  superior  in  number. 

On  the  part  played  by  the  Great  Elector  in  the  wars  of 
the  empire  and  of  Holland  with  Louis  XIV.,  on  the  in¬ 
glorious  manner  in  which  he  was  led  about,  on  his  humili¬ 
ating  Peace  of  Yossem,  and  his  subsequent  quarrels  with 
Montecuculi  and  Bourn  on  ville,  it  is  not  necessary  here  to 
dwell.  It  was  while  he  was  in  winter  quarters  in  Alsace, 
in  1674,  mourning  over  the  loss  of  his  eldest  son,  who  had 
just  died  of  fever,  that  news  was  brought  of  an  inroad  of 
the  Swedes  into  Brandenburg.  Louis  XIV.  had  stirred 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  PRUSSIAN  MONARCHY 


OK 

AJ  O 


them  up  to  this  undertaking,  furnishing  them  with  the 
necessary  funds,  and  causing  his  resident  envoy  to  stand 
over  them  and  see  them  safely  embarked.  The  elector, 
after  in  vain  seeking  immediate  aid  from  The  Hague 
and  from  Amsterdam,  put  his  own  little  army  in  motion 
and  advanced  to  Magdeburg,  and  thence,  by  stealthy  and 
rapid  marches,  to  Rathenow.  In  order  to  hasten  their 
progress  the  foot-soldiers  were  crowded  into  wagons. 
At  Rathenow  he  managed  to  cut  the  Swedish  army  in 
two,  and  when  the  sundered  divisions  tried  to  join,  they 
were  overtaken  at  Fehrbellin,  a  point  some  fifty  miles 
to  the  northwest  of  Berlin.  Here  the  elector  fought  one 
of  his  most  famous  battles,  and  won  a  victory  so  signal  that 
his  alliance  was  sought  after  in  all  directions,  by  Den¬ 
mark,  by  Holland,  by  Munster,  and  by  Brunswick.  Even 
the  emperor,  anxious  to  have  a  share  in  the  profits  of  the 
war,  sent  him  a  few  regiments.  In  the  following  years  all 
Pomerania  was  cleared  of  the  enemy ;  but  the  same 
Nemesis  awaited  the  elector  that  had  overtaken  him  nine¬ 
teen  years  before  at  the  time  of  the  Peace  of  Oliva.  The 
congress  that  had  assembled  at  Nymwegen,  in  order  to 
settle  the  war  of  the  empire  with  France,  soon  began  to 
assume  an  ominously  friendly  tone  toward  Sweden.  The 
Austrian  minister  announced  the  emperor’s  determination 
not  to  endure  that  “a  new  king  of  the  Vandals  [meaning 
the  elector]  should  arise  on  the  Baltic.”  Louis  XIV. 
finally  refused  to  consider  any  general  peace  that  did 
not  include  the  return  to  the  Swedes  of  their  portion  of 
Pomerania,  and  then  made  a  separate,  treaty  with  Holland 
and  the  emperor,  leaving  Brandenburg  to  continue  a  war 
from  which  he  was  determined  she  should  reap  no  benefit. 
At  the  same  time  the  Swedes  made  a  bold  effort  to  advance 
in  the  dead  of  winter  through  Livonia  and  Prussia,  and  to 
retake  their  lost  German  possessions. 


26 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  winter  Frederick  William  roused  himself  to  do  and  dare  the 
campaign  utmost ;  at  all  risks  the  Swedes  were  to  be  prevented  from 
m  Sweden,  Konigsberg,  the  temper  of  whose  inhabitants  could 

not  just  then  be  trusted.  The  elector,  who  wTas  known  to 
be  suffering  with  the  gout,  spread  the  report  that  he  was 
too  ill  to  leave  Berlin,  and  then  set  out  at  the  most  rapid  of 
paces  with  what  troops  he  had  at  hand.  A  part  of  the  way 
lay  across  the  ice  of  the  Frischer  Haff,  but  the  stadthoider 
of  Konigsberg  furnished  twelve  hundred  sleighs  into  which 
the  infantry  were  crowded.  “  It  was  a  merry  sight,”  says 
an  old  diary,  “  the  more  so  as,  the  whole  time,  they  kept 
playing  the  dragoon  march.”  The  elector  himself,  driving 
swiftly  by  on  the  ice,  held  a  review  of  all  his  forces.  Later 
the  way  was  lost,  the  soldiers  had  to  encamp  in  the  open, 
food  gave  out,  and  the  whole  army  threatened  to  become 
demoralized.  But  the  Swedes  were  in  a  still  worse  plight, 
and,  forced  to  retreat,  arrived  at  Riga  with  but  one  thousand 
able-bodied  men  out  of  an  original  sixteen  thousand. 

Brilliant  as  Frederick  William’s  campaign  had  been,  it 
helped  him  to  no  lasting  benefits.  His  funds  were  ex¬ 
hausted,  his  army  seriously  crippled.  Louis  XIV.  sent 
him  an  intimation  that  if  he  did  not  at  once  come  to  terms 
with  Sweden  a  French  army  would  be  sent  against  him ; 
Cleves,  indeed,  was  actually  occupied.  As  no  help  could 
be  expected  from  any  quarter,  even  the  elector’s  former 
friends,  Munster  and  Brunswick,  having  become  pensioners 
of  France,  there  was  no  alternative  but  to  sign  the  Peace 
of  St.  Germain.  At  the  signing  of  the  treaty,  by  which 
he  gave  up  all  his  recent  conquests,  Frederick  William  is 
said  to  have  cursed  the  day  when  he  learned  to  write.  To 
his  friend  Von  Buch  he  made  the  ominous  remark :  “It  is 
not  the  king  of  France  who  compels  me  to  make  peace,  but 
the  emperor,  the  empire,  and  my  own  relations  and  allies. 
They  shall  bitterly  repent  it,  and  shall  suffer  losses  as  great 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  PRUSSIAN  MONARCHY 


27 


as  mine !  ”  He  is  said  once  to  have  quoted  the  verse  of 
Virgil :  “  Exoriare  aliquis  nostris  ex  ossibus  ultor !  ” 

The  conjecture  seems  warranted  that  from  this  time  on  The 
the  elector  was  not  wholly  master  of  his  own  actions.  His  Electress 
wrongs  preyed  upon  him,  he  was  tortured  by  the  gout,  and  Uorothea 
his  wife,  Dorothea,  who  tenderly  cared  for  him,  gained  over 
him  an  undue  influence.  Things  had  been  very  different 
in  earlier  days  ;  much  as  he  loved  his  first  wife,  the  Orange 
princess,  he  would  brook  no  opposition  from  her,  and  had 
been  known  to  enter  her  presence,  to  throw  down  his  hat, 
and  call  loudly  for  one  of  her  nightcaps,  as  a  symbol  of  the 
r61e  she  wished  him  to  play.  Now  Dorothea  could  turn 
him  around  her  fingers.  She  was  a  strange,  violent  woman, 
bent  on  the  advancement  of  her  own  children  ;  and  her 
hostility  to  her  stepsons,  who  stood  in  the  way  of  their 
succession,  was  so  strong  that  she  was  almost  universally 
believed  to  have  tried  to  poison  them.  The  younger 
brother  fell  dead  at  a  ball  in  her  apartments  after  partak¬ 
ing  of  an  orange  that  had  been  handed  him ;  whereupon 
the  elder,  the  Crown  Prince  Frederick,  immediately  fled 
the  court  and  went  to  Cassel,  alleging  that  his  life  was  no 
longer  safe.  A  stern  reprimand  from  his  father  brought 
him  home.  Dorothea’s  influence,  as  well  as  that  of 
Frederick  William’s  ministers, — who  are  known  to  have 
P  bribed  by  France,  —  may  account  in  part  for  the  aston¬ 
ishing  alliance  into  which  the  elector  entered  with  his  old 
enemy,  Louis  XIV.,  —  at  a  time,  too,  when  Louis,  on  the 
most  hollow  of  all  pretexts,  was  annexing  lands  of  the  em¬ 
pire,  summoning  German  princes  to  do  him  homage,  and 
endeavoring  in  every  way  to  prevent  Austria’s  success  in  her 
efforts  to  meet  those  Turkish  invasions  which  culminated 
in  the  siege  of  Vienna. 

This  friendship  cooled  in  consequence  of  the  severe 
measures  taken  by  Louis  XIV.  against  the  Protestants  of 


28 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  French 
Huguenots 
in  Berlin. 


The 

Silesian 

claims. 


France.  When,  in  1685,  the  Edict  of  Nantes  was  revoked, 
when  four  hundred  Protestant  churches  were  torn  down, 
when  the  punishment  of  imprisonment  and  the  galleys  was 
placed  on  the  refusal  to  turn  Catholic,  Frederick  William 
dropped  all  the  etiquette  natural  to  an  ally,  and  published 
his  famous  free-hearted  edict.  He  spoke  of  the  “  persecu¬ 
tions  ”  that  were  going  on  in  France,  and  offered  a  hearty 
welcome  to  all  who  might  be  fortunate  enough  to  escape. 
Some  twenty  thousand  answered  the  call ;  they  were 
splendidly  received,  and  given  every  sort  of  aid  and  en¬ 
couragement.  The  old  church  of  the  Huguenots  still  stands 
in  the  principal  square  of  Berlin ;  their  school  still  thrives ; 
while  their  civilization,  their  arts,  and  their  literature  have 
accrued  to  the  lasting  benefit  of  their  hospitable  enter¬ 
tainers.  It  is  true,  as  Mirabeau  once  said,  that  the 
Germans  would  gradually  have  learnt  of  themselves  to 
make  hats,  stockings,  silk  ribbons,  and  perfumery ;  but  the 
process  might  have  taken  a  long  time.  And  no  one  can 
deny  the  immense  influence  that  the  Huguenots  exercised 
in  bringing  in  practical  comforts  ;  of  gardening,  for  instance, 
to  the  elector’s  delight,  they  made  a  regular  science. 

As  the  coolness  with  France  grew  more  marked,  Freder¬ 
ick  William  drew  closer  once  more  to  the  emperor,  and 
sought  in  especial  to  settle  an  old  dispute  that  had  been 
going  on  between  the  two  houses  for  half  a  century,  'er 
manner  in  which  he  did  so  was  to  be  pregnant  with  results 
for  the  future  of  the  Prussian  state.  During  the  Thirty 
Years’  War  Ferdinand  II.  had  confiscated  the  Silesian 
duchies  of  Brieg,  Liegnitz,  and  Glogau,  as  well  as  Jagern- 
dorf,  which  would  have  reverted  to  Brandenburg  by  Erb- 
verbriiderung ,  or  heritage  treaty  with  an  allied  house. 
The  Great  Elector  held  out  for  the  return  of  these  lands, 
but  was  willing  at  last  to  compromise  for  the  little  prov¬ 
ince  of  Schwiebus.  Even  this  Leopold  refused  until  the 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  PRUSSIAN  MONARCHY 


29 


Crown  Prince  Frederick,  taking  matters  into  his  own 
hands,  and  willing  to  sacrifice  anything  for  the  imperial 
alliance,  signed  a  secret  agreement  to  give  back  Schwiebus 
so  soon  as  he  should  succeed  to  the  electorate.  How  im¬ 
portant  the  matter  was  to  prove  will  be  shown  in  another 
connection. 

Frederick  William  died  in  1688,  leaving  a  will  by  which 
his  territories  were  distributed  among  his  numerous  sons. 
So  far  had  the  electress  brought  the  man  whose  whole  life 
had  given  the  lie  to  such  a  policy,  and  from  whose  own 
lips  we  have  the  positive  statement  that  he  considered  sub¬ 
division  the  ruin  of  Saxony,  of  the  Palatinate,  of  Hesse,  and 
of  Brunswick.  The  new  heir,  with  the  sanction  of  the  coun¬ 
cil  of  state,  suppressed  the  document,  on  the  ground  that  it 
was  counter  to  the  fundamental  laws  of  Brandenburg. 

Of  the  personality  of  this  new  ruler,  the  Elector  Freder¬ 
ick  III.,  it  is  sufficient  to  say  that,  although  somewhat  de¬ 
formed,  in  consequence  of  a  fall  from  his  nurse’s  arms,  he 
was  very  vain,  very  lavish,  and  exceedingly  fond  of  play¬ 
ing  a  part  in  pompous  ceremonies.  His  grandson,  F reder- 
ick  the  Great,  once  said  of  him,  epigrammatically,  that  he 
was  great  in  small  and  small  in  great  things;  and  again,  that 
he  would  probably  have  made  a  persecutor,  had  there  been 
any  solemnities  attached  to  persecution.  When  still  in 
the  nursery  he  founded  an  order  of  knighthood,  which  not 
2^ily  he  himself,  but  others  also,  took  seriously,  and  with 
regard  to  which  each  detail  was  most  punctiliously  ar¬ 
ranged.  The  sums  expended  in  a  single  year  of  his  reign 
for  the  gold  and  silver  lace  on  the  court  liveries  amounted 
to  forty-two  thousand  thalers,  while  his  daughter  at  her 
wedding  is  said  to  have  worn  finery  which  cost  some  four 
millions.  On  the  occasion  of  inaugurating  the  new  Uni¬ 
versity  of  Halle,  it  was  calculated  that  the  expenses  of  the 
various  festivities  must  have  come  to  five  times  the  amount 


The  person¬ 
ality  of 
Frederick  I. 


30 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


(l 


<■ 


k 


**  (A 


\ 


I  7\  '  N 

rLiit^ 

L'/vVrt 


4vSx 


£ 


of  the  endowment.  The  witty  and  intelligent  Sophie 
Charlotte,  the  second  of  Frederick’s  three  wives,  once 
implied  that  she  considered  her  husband  a  stage  king,  and 
could  not  refrain  on  her  death-bed  from  saying,  that  now 
her  lord  would  have  an  opportunity  for  one  of  his  grand 
displays.  In  order  to  raise  funds  for  such  costly  predilec¬ 
tions,  it  was  necessary  to  resort  to  the  most  unique,  and 
even  petty,  methods  of  taxation.  Scarcely  an  object  that 
was  bought  or  sold  escaped  the  eye  of  the  watchful  offi¬ 
cials,  and  people  were  obliged  on  demand  to  take  off  in 
the  streets  the  very  wigs  on  their  heads,  to  make  sure  that 
the  government  mark  was  on  the  inside.  It  was  the  time 
when  enormous  wigs  were  a  fashionable  necessity;  they 
varied  somewhat,  according  to  the  whims  of  Louis  XIV., 
but  were,  on  the  whole,  it  is  said,  more  enormous  in  Bran¬ 


denburg  than  elsewhere,  because  the  elector  thought  to 
hide  his  deformity  by  the  profuseness  of  his  locks.  In 
addition  to  the  wig  tax  there  was  a  heavy  tax  on  carriages, 
on  the  pretext  that  the  wheels  wore  out  the  costly  pave¬ 
ments.  Permits,  to  be  renewed  each  year,  were  needed  by 
those  who  intended  to  drink  tea,  coffee,  or  chocolate.  No 


source  of  revenue  was  left  unexploited;  a  certain  Com- 
merzienrath ,  or  merchant  prince,  by  the  name  of  Kreuz, 
was  intrusted  with  a  monopoly  for  supplying  hog  bristles 
to  be  used  in  the  manufacture  of  brushes.  A  generrd 
order  was  issued  that  when  the  swine  were  about  to  shell 
their  coats  the  bristles  should  be  collected,  wrapped  in 
packets  as  they  came  from  each  separate  animal,  and  sent 
to  Kreuz  s  clerks.  It  was  the  custom  for  each  owner  to 
mark  his  hog;  but,  under  penalty  of  confiscation,  this 
marking  was  to  be  so  done  as  not  to  injure  the  particularly 
stiff  hairs  that  grew  along  the  spine.  Witticisms  at  Kreuz’s 
expense  were  declared  punishable  by  imprisonment  and 
mutilation. 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  PRUSSIAN  MONARCHY 


31 


There  is  a  twofold  marvel  connected  with  Frederick’s  Frederick’s 
extravagances  and  with  his  excessive  demands  on  the  peo-  desire  for 
pie.  On  the  one  hand,  although  in  addition  to  money  pay-  the  royal 
ments  constant  contributions  were  required  for  his  court 
festivals,  his  subjects  were  fond  of  him,  and  sincerely 
mourned  him  when  he  died.  His  very  profusion  endeared 
him  to  them,  and  many  found  occupation  in  carrying  out 
his  pageants  and  public  works.  But  still  more  remarkable 
is  the  circumstance  that  at  the  end  of  his  reign  there  was 
no  very  alarming  deficit  in  the  treasury.  This  is  due  to 
the  fact  that  for  his  war  expenses  he  had  received  large 
subsidies  from  Austria  and  other  powers,  while  the  regu¬ 
lar  Brandenburg  revenues,  administered  along  the  lines 
laid  down  by  the  Great  Elector,  had  considerably  increased. 

The  most  expensive  of  Frederick’s  hobbies,  costing  him  in 
all  some  six  million  thalers,  was  the  attainment  of  the 
royal  crown.  It  opened  up  a  chance  for  unfolding  un-  . 
heard -of  magnificence ;  but  for  that  very  reason  it  called 
forth  all  his  best  efforts,  and  brought  to  the  surface  all  his 
latent  abilities.  It  was  his  own  work  from  beginning  to 
end ;  his  councillors  and  ministers  were  almost  all  against 
the  project,  and  the  difficulties  in  the  way  were  very  great ; 
but  he  would  not  be  daunted,  and  politically,  as  the  event 
proved,  he  acted  wisely  and  well.  He  joined  at  the  right 
time  in  the  upward  trend  of  the  minor  European  states. 

Hanover,  in  1692,  had  risen  to  be  an  electorate,  and  her  rul¬ 
ing  house  was  soon  to  be  recognized  as  next  in  succession 
to  the  crown  of  England ;  Holland  had  already  given  a 
king  to  that  land ;  Bavaria  was  striving  for  the  Spanish 
succession,  and  only  the  death  of  her  electoral  prince  pre¬ 
vented  her  achieving  it ;  the  House  of  Hesse  hoped  to  suc¬ 
ceed  to  the  throne  of  Sweden,  and  the  Elector  Palatine  to 
become  king  of  Armenia. 

Even  the  Great  Elector  had  paid  great  attention  to 


32 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Negotia¬ 
tions 
•with  the 
emperor. 


questions  of  precedence  and  etiquette ;  carrying  on  long 
and  wearisome  negotiations  in  order  to  be  called  “  brother  ” 
by  the  king  of  France,  and  “  your  Serenity  ”  by  the  Spanish 
sovereign,  and  also  to  be  allowed,  like  the  states  of  Venice, 
Tuscany,  and  Savoy,  to  have  his  envoys  put  on  their  hats 
at  the  end  of  an  interview  with  the  emperor.  If  these 
matters  were  of  importance  to  a  man  of  action  like  Fred¬ 
erick  William,  they  were  doubly  so  to  his  punctilious  and 
small-minded  successor.  Frederick  declared,  in  1697,  at 
the  time  of  the  Ryswick  Congress,  that  he  had  been  out¬ 
raged  in  the  eyes  of  all  Europe  because,  of  his  two  envoys, 
only  one  was  given  a  hand-shake  and  the  title  of  “your 
Excellency  ”  by  the  imperialists,  whereas,  in  the  case  of 
monarchies,  this  compliment  was  rendered  to  both.  Only 
with  difficulty,  at  this  same  congress,  had  the  title  of 
“  Electoral  Serenity  ”  been  conceded  to  himself.  But  an 
incident  that  left  an  even  greater  impression,  and  that  has 
often  been  looked  upon  as  the  starting-point  for  the  idea 
of  becoming  king,  occurred  to  Frederick  personally  on  the 
occasion  of  a  visit  to  William  of  Orange.  Just  when  and 
where  is  a  matter  of  dispute,  but  various  writers  agree  that, 
in  his  capacity  as  king  of  England,  William  occupied  an 
arm-chair,  giving  to  Frederick  one  with  only  a  back.  “  TJn 
fauteuil  et  une  chaise  a  dos ,”  writes  Frederick  the  Great, 
“ penserent  brouiller  ces  princes  d  jamais T 

The  “grand  project,”  as  Frederick  and  his  ministers 
always  called  the  plan  of  gaining  the  crown,  was  met, 
when  it  first  came  up,  in  1699,  with  objections  of  various 
kinds,  the  chief  of  which  seems  to  have  been  that  the 
assumption  of  the  new  title  would  bring  more  expense, 
but  no  real  increase  of  power.  Frederick  drew  up  with 
his  own  hand  an  abstract  of  the  reasons  that  led  him  to 
overrule  such  findings.  The  honor  and  utility  of  his  house 
would  be  furthered.  He  already  possessed  the  power; 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  PRUSSIAN  MONARCHY 


33 


why  should  he  not  have  the  name  ?  He  thought  that  he 
could  reckon  on  the  consent  of  his  neighbors,  as  he  desired 
no  man’s  land.  Now  was  the  time,  if  ever,  for  the  em¬ 
peror  was  old,  and  needed  his  assistance.  Everything 
turned  on  this  consent  of  the  head  of  the  House  of  Austria 
and  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire,  but  it  was  difficult  to 
obtain.  Emperor  Leopold,  a  not  unkindly  man,  given  to 
“  hunting,  music,  and  devotional  exercises,”  and  possessed 
of  fine  eyes,  a  good  nose,  smooth  chestnut  hair,  and  a  ruddy 
complexion,  was  not  without  the  obstinacy  and  slowness  of 
his  race.  This  was  exemplified  by  his  feeble  gait,  and,  to 
quote  a  contemporary,  by  “  his  extraordinarily  large  mouth 
and  his  lower  lip,  so  thick  that  it  spoils  all  the  rest  of 
his  face.”  As  far  back  as  1693,  negotiations  had  begun 
with  Vienna  for  the  recognition  of  the  elector’s  rights  in 
Prussia.  Austria  had  long  refused  him  the  title  of  duke, 
on  the  ground  that  the  old  act  by  which  the  Teutonic 
Order  had  been  invested  with  these  lands  had  never  been 
formally  abrogated.  At  last,  grudgingly,  he  had  been  rec¬ 
ognized  as  duke  in  Prussia,  but  “  without  prejudice  to  the 
rights  of  the  worthy  Teutonic  Order.”  Then  had  come  a 
promise  that,  at  least,  no  other  elector  should  obtain  the 
royal  dignity  in  preference  to  Brandenburg. 

The  Austrian  ministers  were  opposed  to  the  project, 
chiefly  on  the  ground  that  the  aggrandizement  of  an  elector 
would  weaken  the  imperial  authority ;  already  electors 
were  beginning  to  dispute  with  his  Majesty  on  questions 
of  etiquette.  There  was  a  religious  side  to  the  matter, 
too,  which  weighed  heavily  with  Leopold.  Should  he,  the 
natural  defender  of  the  Catholic  church,  help  to  set  up  a 
Protestant  monarchy  ?  With  regard  to  this  latter  point 
the  emperor’s  fears  were  quieted  in  a  manner  bordering  on 
the  marvellous.  With  his  resident  envoy  in  Vienna, 
Bartholdi,  Frederick  was  in  the  habit  of  corresponding  in 


The  Jesuits, 
Wolf  and 
Yota. 


VOL.  II  —  D 


Austria 

yields. 


/ 


34  A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

f  ;r,  names  of  persons  especially  being  transmitted  in 
ierals.  Frederick  received  one  day  a  message  that  161 
(r>artholdi  himself)  had  better  be  the  one  to  insinuate  the 
project  of  royalty  to  the  emperor.  He  read  instead  160, 
which  indicated  a  Jesuit  priest,  Father  Wolf,  who  had  once 
been  at  Berlin  as  chaplain  of  an  imperial  envoy,  and  with 
whom  Frederick  had  had  various  dealings.  Not  greatly 
surprised,  therefore,  the  elector  wrote  off  to  Wolf,  who, 
much  flattered,  brought  the  matter  before  Leopold,  and  was 
not  ungraciously  received.  Whatever  scruples  arose  were 
explained  away,  W olf  s  own  hope  and  trust  being  that  the 
new  sovereigns  could  be  induced  to  turn  Catholic,  —  as 
Augustus  the  Strong  had  done  on  assuming  the  throne  of 
Poland  two  years  before,  and  as  Ernest  Augustus  of  Han¬ 
over  had  declared  his  willingness  to  do  should  other  means 
fail.  With  this  end  in  view,  Wolf  and  his  friend,  Father 
Vota,  laid  regular  siege,  not  only  to  Frederick,  but  to  the 
electress  as  well,  the  latter  entering  with  them  into  long 
theological  discussions,  and  writing  letters  to  Vota  on  so 
abstruse  a  subject  as  the  “Authority  of  the  Church 
Fathers.”  The  hopes  of  the  Jesuits  ran  high,  although 
never  for  a  moment  did  they  have  any  chance  of  real  suc¬ 
cess.  Frederick  told  the  English  envoy  that  he  had 
promised  Vota  “  that  he  [Vota]  should  have  the  honor  of 
converting  him  so  soon  as  he  should  feel  himself  in  the 
humor  to  become  Catholic.”  At  the  cost  of  no  greater 
concession  than  this  he  won  two  faithful  allies,  who  did 
him  much  good  service. 

But  all  this  would  have  availed  him  nothing  had  it  not 
been  for  the  great  straits  in  which  Austria  found  herself, 
with  the  war  for  the  Spanish  succession  becoming  daily 
more  inevitable,  and  without  sufficient  funds  in  the  treas¬ 
ury  to  pay  for  the  daily  expenses  of  the  imperial  house¬ 
hold.  So  low  did  Leopold’s  credit  fall  that  no  Jew  would 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  PRUSSIAN  MONARCHY 


35 


lend  money  to  him  at  less  than  seventeen  per  cent  interest. 
Several  regiments  of  the  army  had  to  be  suppressed  for  want 
of  means  with  which  to  pay  them.  “  If  twelve  angels  of 
Heaven  were  to  come  and  ask  for  money,  none  would  they 
get  from  this  court,”  wrote  Bartholdi  to  Berlin.  And  here 
was  a  power  which  was  ready,  in  return  for  a  concession 
costing  nothing,  to  furnish  from  eight  to  ten  thousand 
men,  to  renounce  subsidies  due  by  a  former  treaty,  and  to 
help  secure  the  readmittance  of  Bohemia  into  the  Electo¬ 
ral  College.  Leopold  remained  firm  for  almost  a  year; 
the  correspondence  on  the  subject  fills  twenty-one  folio 
volumes.  The  last  straw  that  broke  his  resistance  was 
the  partition  treaty  of  March  25,  1700,  between  France, 
England,  and  Holland,  by  which  Austria  considered  her¬ 
self  scandalously  treated,  not  having  been  consulted  on 
any  point.  Father  Wolf  was  allowed  to  send  a  message 
to  Berlin  to  the  “  most  serene  elector,  and  soon ,  soon  to  be 
most  mighty  king.”  The  final  treaty  was  signed  only 
two  days  before  the  death  of  the  childless  King  of  Spain, 
an  event  that  was  to  plunge  Europe  into  a  vortex  of  war 
for  the  next  fifteen  years.  Much  care  and  thought  had 
been  expended  on  the  exact  wording  of  the  title;  Freder¬ 
ick  was  determined  to  be  no  mere  vassal  of  the  empire  in 
his  new  capacity,  but  rather  to  take  some  such  name  as 
“  King  of  the  Vandals,”  “  King  of  the  Wends,”  or  “King 
of  Prussia.”  To  the  last  form  objection  was  made  by 
the  Poles,  on  the  ground  that  the  whole  of  West  Prussia 
still  belonged  to  them.  The  wording  “  King  in  Prussia,” 
was  finally  adopted,  and  a  special  declaration  signed  that 
no  interference  was  intended  with  Poland’s  rights.  Once 
at  the  goal  of  his  wishes,  Frederick  turned  sharply  on  the 
Jesuits,  paid  the  venerable  fathers  in  hard  cash  for  all 
their  services,  but  made  it  very  plain  that  he  would  make 
no  single  concession  in  the  matter  of  the  Catholic  religion. 


36 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  royal 
coronation 
at  Konigs- 
berg. 


Not  even  a  church  was  handed  over  to  them  in  Berlin, 
and  so  little  regard  was  paid  to  the  Pope  that  he  was  not 
even  notified  of  what  had  taken  place,  or  of  the  intended 
coronation.  Clement  XII.  flew  into  a  great  rage,  and  wrote 
a  circular  note  to  the  Catholic  powers  begging  them  not  to 
approve  the  impious  actions  of  the  Marchese  di  Branden¬ 
burg.  For  nearly  a  hundred  years  he  and  his  successors 
refused  to  address  the  Hohenzollerns  by  any  other  title, 
even  by  that  of  elector. 

It  remained  to  give  an  outward  expression  to  the  new 
honor  the  emperor  had  “  accorded,”  and  to  prepare  a 
grander  and  more  sumptuous  coronation  than  anything 
that  had  yet  been  seen.  Frederick  had  been  very  impa¬ 
tient  for  this  event,  had  “sighed  for  it  ceaselessly  and 
could  not  sleep,”  wrote  the  French  ambassador,  Des 
Alleurs.  The  crown,  sceptre,  and  mantle  had  been  made 
ready  months  before  the  time ;  night  after  night  one  of 
the  gates  of  the  city  of  Berlin  was  left  wide  open  for  the 
courier  who  was  to  bring  the  emperor’s  final  response 
from  Vienna.  All  points  of  ceremonial  had  been  care¬ 
fully  studied  from  books  of  etiquette  and  from  the  usages 
observed  in  Denmark  and  Poland.  A  detailed  description 
had  even  been  sent  from  England  of  the  coronation  of 
Charles  II.  in  Scotland.  There  are  learned  discussions  in 
the  Prussian  archives  as  to  how  the  new  king1  should 
receive  the  envoys  of  foreign  countries  less  important  than 
his  own  —  standing,  with  his  hat  on,  like  the  Emperor; 
or  sitting,  with  his  fiat  on,  like  the  king  of  France ;  or 
standing,  with  his  hat  off,  like  this  same  Charles.  The 
procession  that  set  out  from  Berlin  to  Konigsberg,  in 
December  1700,  was  of  great  size  and  magnificence;  it 
was  obliged  to  move  in  relays,  as  the  towns  through 
which  it  passed  could  otherwise  not  have  stood  the  bur¬ 
den.  Thirty  thousand  horses  had  been  requisitioned,  in 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  PRUSSIAN  MONARCHY 


37 


addition  to  those  from  the  royal  stables.  The  journey  lasted 
twelve  days,  and  the  ceremonies  four  more ;  on  the  15th 
of  January  four  heralds-at-arms  proclaimed  through  all 
the  streets  the  elevation  of  Prussia  to  a  kingdom.  From 
this  time  on  it  was  forbidden  to  speak  of  the  elector  save 
as  44  his  Majesty  ” ;  and  the  English  minister  reports,  “  If 
any  one  forgets,  and  lets  fall  the  words  4  Electoral  High¬ 
ness,’  he  is  obliged  to  pay  a  fine  of  a  ducat  for  the  benefit 
of  the  poor.”  On  January  16  came  proclamations  from 
all  the  pulpits;  on  the  17th  the  founding  of  the  order  of 
the  Black  Eagle,  membership  in  which  forms  to  this  day 
the  greatest  distinction  in  the  gift  of  the  Prussian  mon¬ 
arch.  In  addition  to  princes  of  the  blood,  there  were  to 
be  but  thirty  knights,  well  born,  without  reproach,  and 
over  thirty  years  of  age.  They  were  to  wear  as  insignia: 
a  band  of  orange  color,  in  memory  of  the  mother  of  the 
king ;  a  Maltese  cross ;  and  a  silver  star,  upon  which  was  a 
black  eagle  holding  in  one  claw  a  crown  of  laurel  and  in 
the  other  a  thunderbolt,  while  beneath  was  a  device,  Suum 
cuique. 

On  January  18  took  place  the  coronation  itself,  the 
ceremonial  of  which  was  copied  from  that  of  the  imperial 
coronation  at  Frankfort,  with  the  exception,  however, 
that  the  religious  element  was  kept  in  the  background. 
Frederick  did,  indeed,  in  order  that  he  might  be  called 
44  his  sacred  Majesty,”  create  for  the  occasion  two  Protes¬ 
tant  bishops, — one  Lutheran,  one  Calvinist;  but  he  signifi¬ 
cantly  placed  the  crown  on  his  own  head,  and  afterward 
with  his  own  hands  on  that  of  his  queen,  the  episcopal 
functions  being  confined  to  the  consecration  with  the  holy 
oil.  On  the  splendid  accessories  of  this  whole  demonstra¬ 
tion,  on  the  rich  robes  and  priceless  jewels,  on  the  baldachins 
carried  by  nobles,  the  salvos  of  artillery  that  accompanied 
the  drinking  of  every  toast,  the  oxen  roasted  whole  and 


38 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Danckel- 
mann  and* 
Warten- 
berg. 


stuffed  with  animals  dwindling  in  size,  the  fountains  run¬ 
ning  wine,  the  thousands  of  coins  scattered  among  the 
people,  it  is  not  necessary  to  dwell.  The  house  of  the 
governor  of  Prussia  was  decorated  so  as  to  represent  a 
temple  of  fame.  The  king  himself  composed  a  prayer 
thanking  God  for  having  accorded  him  the  crown,  and 
asking  His  blessing.  It  was  characteristic  of  this  Hohen- 
zollern  to  declare  an  amnesty  for  prisoners  who  had  not 
offended  against  divine  or  terrestrial  majesty ,  and  to  cause 
a  copperplate  engraving  to  be  made  of  the  procession,  in 
which  he  himself  is  represented  as  a  tall  and  slender  youth. 
The  festivities  lasted  in  all  for  several  weeks,  being  renewed 
on  the  return  of  the  royal  pair  to  Berlin  and  Potsdam. 
An  opera  was  performed  called  the  “  Struggle  of  the  Old 
and  New  Century.”  To  the  latter  was  due  the  palm  of 
victory,  because  it  had  actually  witnessed  the  coronation ; 
the  old  century  could  merely  make  the  weak  defence  that 
it  had  prepared  the  way  for  the  great  event. 

By  a  happy  concatenation  of  circumstances  Frederick  had 
been  able  to  raise  the  prestige  of  his  state,  and  to  perform 
a  service  for  his  house  which  laid  the  foundation  for  its 
future  glory ;  but  there  his  merits  ended.  He  lived 
merely  for  the  present,  was  lamentably  weak  in  his  foreign 
policy,  left  the  business  of  ruling  in  the  hands  of  syco- 
v  phants,  and  spent  what  funds  he  could  lay  hold  of  without 
attempting  to  organize  the  finances  on  a  permanent  basis. 
There  was,  indeed,  a  privy  council,  consisting  of  all  the 
heads  of  the  governmental  departments,  but  it  was  there, 
as  Leibnitz  said,  pour  la  forme  et  pour  Vhonneur.  Its  head, 
the  grand  president,  held  a  position  equivalent  to  that  of 
prime  minister  in  other  countries.  One  faithful  and 
capable  president  Frederick  had  found  in  Eberhard  von 
Danckelmann,  who  had  been  his  tutor  in  his  youth,  and 
had  served  him  with  much  devotion  during  a  long  series  of 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  PRUSSIAN  MONARCHY 


39 


years.  But  Danckelmann  fell  a  victim  to  court  intrigues 
and  to  the  hatred  of  the  electress,  his  chief  sin  doubtless 
being  that  he  had  opposed  the  idea  of  securing  the  royal 
crown.  He  was  accused  of  not  having  stood  up  firmly 
enough  for  Prussia’s  interests  at  the  Treaty  of  Ryswick,  in 
1697,  and  was  finally  represented  as  wishing  to  usurp 
Fredericks  prerogatives.  “He  would  like  to  play  the 
electoi,  would  he  !  I  will  show  him  that  I  am  master !  ” 
cried  the  irate  prince,  and  treated  his  former  favorite  with 
absolute  ferocity,  casting  him  in  prison,  and  when  no  court 
could  be  found  to  condemn  him,  keeping  him  there  on  one 
pretext  or  another  for  ten  years.  Count  Kolb  von  War- 
tenberg,  Danckelmann’s  worst  enemy,  frivolous  and  uncon- 
scientious  to  the  last  degree,  became  his  successor  with 
almost  unlimited  power,  and  with  the  promise  that  no 
inquiry  should  ever  be  made  into  his  methods  of  adminis¬ 
tration.  His  wife  at  the  same  time  enjoyed  the  peculiar 
distinction  of  being  Frederick’s  official  mistress,  a  post 
which  the  new  king  had  found  it  necessary  to  establish  in 
imitation  of  Louis  XIV.  All  the  paraphernalia  of  such  a 
relationship  were  there,  —  a  secret  staircase  connecting  the 
two  apartments,  a  secluded  garden,  in  which  Frederick 
daily  walked  with  his  minister’s  wife.  Yet  both  averred, 
under  circumstances  leaving  no  room  for  doubt,  that  their 
intimacy  was  purely  platonic.  The  Wartenberg  pair  finally 
fell  into  disgrace ;  the  count  by  reason  of  an  outrageous 
misappropriation  of  funds,  in  which  he  and  his  subordinates 
were  concerned,  the  countess  because  of  outbursts  of  tem¬ 
per  and  a  jealous  eagerness  to  maintain  her  position  as 
first  lady  at  the  court,  which  led  her  into  a  hand-to-hand 
conflict  and  a  literal  tearing  of  the  hair  with  the  Dutch 
ambassadress. 

A  wiser  and  a  stronger  man  than  Frederick  would  have 
managed  to  make  more  capital  out  of  the  wars  in  which, 


40 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  French 
and  Turkish 
wars. 


V 


Sophie 

Charlotte 


during  almost  every  year  of  his  whole  reign,  both  as 
elector  and  as  king,  his  troops  were  engaged.  On  many 
a  field,  even  according  to  the  testimony  of  men  like  Eugene 
of  Savoy  and  William  of  Orange,  they  had  won  the  day 
for  the  allies  ;  yet  at  every  peace  conference  Brandenburg- 
Prussia  played  an  inferior,  not  to  say  humiliating,  role,  and 
came  forth  at  the  end  with  small  rewards,  which  did  not 
begin  to  compare  in  worth  with  the  sacrifices  made.  With 
the  exception  of  the  tiny  district  in  Guelders,  given  him 
at  Utrecht,  Frederick  bought  all  his  territorial  acquisitions 
for  hard  cash ;  Quedlinburg  and  Elbing  from  the  impover¬ 
ished  Augustus  of  Saxony,  the  small  Westphalian  county 
of  Tecklenburg  from  the  Count  of  Solms-Braunfels.  Far 
from  being  the  gainer,  then,  by  the  French  and  Turkish 
wars,  Prussia,  bereft  of  her  best  soldiers,  had  been  obliged 
to  make  great  sacrifices  in  order  to  raise  militia  armies 
which  should  protect  her  boundaries  against  the  overlap¬ 
ping  waves  of  the  Swedish-Polish  struggle.  The  hand  of 
the  military  recruiting  officer  rested  like  iron  on  the  land ; 
many  of  the  men  who  fell,  bravely  fighting,  in  Italy  and 
Belgium  had  had  to  be  regularly  kidnapped  into  the  ser¬ 
vice.  The  tone  of  the  army  was  incredibly  low  and  coarse, 
the  punishments  and  general  treatment  such  as  would  not 
now  be  inflicted  on  dumb  beasts.  Slitting  of1,  the  nose  and 
cutting  off  of  ears  were  common  penalties  for  desertion.1 

In  one  respect,  and  in  one  only,  can  we  give  unqualified 
praise  to  Frederick  I.:  he  encouraged  liberty  of  thought 
and  literary  and  artistic  endeavor  in  every  way.  How 
far  this  was  owing  to  the  influence  of  his  second  wife, 
the  witty  Charlotte  of  Hanover,  who  had  been  educated  in 
three  creeds  so  as  to  fit  her  for  anv  husband,  would  be 
hard  to  establish.  Frederick  the  Great  says  of  his  grand- 

1See  Freytag’s  very  interesting  essay  in  Bilder  aus  der  deutschen 
Vergangenheit ,  Vol.  V. 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  PRUSSIAN  MONARCHY 


41 


mother  in  his  memoirs,  “  She  it  was  who  brought  true 
social  refinement  and  love  of  art  and  science  to  Prussia, 
and  inspired  the  etiquette  on  which  her  husband  laid  such 
stress  with  meaning  and  dignity.”  The  Mercure  Gralant , 
a  newspaper  of  the  day,  gives  an  attractive  picture  of  her 
personality,  —  of  her  large,  sweet  blue  eyes,  the  prodigious 
quantity  of  her  black  hair,  her  well-proportioned  nose, 
bright  red  lips,  and  brilliant  complexion.  A  medal  struck 
in  her  honor  declared  that  on  one  throne  dwelt  love  and 
majesty.  And  she  was  more  intellectual  and  witty,  even, 
than  she  was  beautiful.  It  was  of  this  queen  that  Leib¬ 
nitz,  who  was  like  a  son  of  the  house  at  the  Prussian 
court,  once  declared,  that  she  would  never  be  satisfied 
until  she  knew  the  “  why  of  the  why.”  “  Leibnitz  wishes 
to  teach  me  the  infinitely  little,”  she  wrote  in  one  of  her 
letters ;  “  has  he  forgotten  that  I  am  the  wife  of  Frederick 
I.?”  She  spoke  several  languages,  and  her  French,  espe¬ 
cially,  was  so  excellent  that  a  Huguenot  refugee  once 
asked  in  all  sincerity  if  she  could  also  speak  German. 
She  did  not  dislike  magnificence  and  display,  but  would 
like  to  have  had  it,  to  use  her  own  words,  “  independant 
de  la  gene”  The  story  is  told  that  at  the  coronation  in 
Konigsberg  she  took  a  pinch  of  snuff  at  one  of  the  most 
solemn  moments,  which  proceeding  so  shocked  her  punc¬ 
tilious  husband  that  he  sent  a  lackey  to  warn  her  against 
a  repetition  of  the  offence.  She  afterward  wrote  to  a 
friend  that  the  whole  proceeding  had  bored  her. 

Sophie  Charlotte’s  palace  at  Lietzenburg,  the  name  of 
which  was  afterward,  to  honor  her  memory,  changed  to 
Charlottenburg,  became  a  rallying  place  for  all  the  great 
men  of  the  day :  for  the  versatile  Leibnitz,  the  “  father  of 
German  philosophy  and  inventor  of  differential  calculus,” 
and  for  a  host  of  others,  philosophers  and  artists,  Jesuits 
and  Pietists.  Among  the  latter  were  Spener,  Francke, 


42 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Frederick’s 

death. 


and  Thomasius,  —  all  of  them  men  who,  for  their  freedom 
of  speech,  had  been  persecuted  in  other  German  states, 
but  at  Frederick’s  court  had  found  favor  and  an  opportu¬ 
nity  to  teach  in  his  new  university.  Thomasius,  especially, 
is  interesting  as  the  bold  and  outspoken  opponent  of  all  the 
current  nonsense  of  his  day.  He  had  made  himself  unpop¬ 
ular  at  Leipzig  by  laughing  at  what  he  termed  the  44  wig- 
gery  ”  of  his  legal  confreres ,  at  their  belief  in  witches,  in 
the  divine  right  of  kings,  in  the  efficacy  of  torture,  and  in 
the  necessity  for  clothing  their  barren  thoughts  in  Latin 
instead  of  in  German  words.  Frederick  received  Thoma¬ 
sius,  who  had  been  ordered  to  keep  silence  under  pain  of 
imprisonment,  with  every  honor,  bestowing  upon  him  a 
court  title  and  a  yearly  stipend.  Francke  was  the  founder 
of  the  famous  orphan  asylum  in  Halle,  which  began  with  a 
capital  of  four  and  a  half  thalers,  and  grew  to  be  one  of 
the  greatest  institutions  of  its  kind  in  the  whole  world. 

It  was  with  the  help  of  these,  his  paladins,  and  espe¬ 
cially  of  Leibnitz,  that  Frederick  founded  the  44  Academy 
of  Sciences,”  which  started  out,  among  other  advantages, 
with  its  own  observatory.  One  of  its  first  tasks  was  to 
introduce  the  reformed  Gregorian  calendar,  which  the 
Prussians,  from  hatred  of  the  Pope,  had  in  1582  refused 
to  accept.  The  discrepancy  between  the  old  reckoning 
and  the  new  had  by  this  time  grown  to  eleven  days,  and 
this  was  remedied  by  making  the  first  day  of  March,  1700, 
follow  directly  upon  the  18th  of  February. 

Frederick  died  in  1718,  of  fright,  it  was  said,  at  the  ap¬ 
pearance  of  the  44  white  lady,”  who  is  supposed  to  this  day 
to  appear  whenever  a  great  catastrophe  impends  for  the 
Hohenzollern  House.  In  this  especial  case  the  phenome¬ 
non  was  afterward  explained.  After  Sophie  Charlotte’s 
death  the  old  king,  fearing  that  the  crown  prince,  Freder¬ 
ick  William,  might  leave  no  male  heir,  had  taken  to  him- 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  PRUSSIAN  MONARCHY 


43 


self  a  third  wife,  Sophie  Louise  of  Mecklenburg-Schwerin. 
She  was  always  an  intolerant  Lutheran,  and  at  last,  being 
seized  with  religious  mania,  had  to  be  confined  under  lock 
and  key.  She  escaped  one  day,  and  passing  a  glass  door 
in  her  flowing  garments,  gave  her  husband  his  death-blow. 


CHAPTER  II 


Palsied 
state  of 
empire. 


THE  TURKISH  CAMPAIGNS,  THE  AGGRESSIONS  OF  LOUIS 
XIV.  AND  THE  SPANISH  SUCCESSION  WAR 

Literature:  Erdmannsdorfer’s  great  work  in  the  Oncken  Series, 
Deutsche  Geschichte,  1648-1740,  deals  exhaustively  with  this  period  and 
is  much  better  than  Ritter.  It  received  a  prize  as  the  best  historical  pro¬ 
duction  of  the  year  in  which  it  appeared. 

If  from  the  newly  founded  kingdom  of  Prussia  we  turn 
the  to  the  affairs  of  the  empire  at  large,  we  shall  find  that, 
contrary  to  expectation,  the  Peace  of  Westphalia  by  no 
means  ushered  in  a  long  period  of  general  repose.  Of 
that  empire  there  was  by  this  -time  little  left  but  its  out¬ 
ward  form.  What  could  have  been  more  harsh  than  the 
judgment  passed  upon  it  by  the  clearest  head  of  the  age 
—  the  jurist  and  historian,  Samuel  Puffendorf:  “It  is  no 
more  a  nation  than  was  the  league  of  Greek  states  which 
Agamemnon  led  against  Troy ;  it  is  not  a  monarchy,  not 
an  oligarchy,  nor  yet  a  democracy ;  it  is  an  abortion  —  a 
certain  irregular  body  like  unto  a  monster.”  As  Voltaire 
said  of  it  two  generations  later,  it  was  a  Holy  Roman 
Empire  that  was  neither  holy,  nor  Roman,  nor  an  empire. 
Four  folio  volumes,  indeed,  were  still  needed  to  designate 
all  the  privileges  and  prerogatives  of  its  head.  He  was 
still  “fountain  of  justice,”  still  the  supreme  feudal  lord 
from  whom  all  power  emanated.  Titles  and  other  empty 
distinctions  he  might  distribute  to  his  heart’s  content. 
Rut  his  real  influence  on  affairs,  save  as  head  of  the  House 
of  Austria,  was  as  scant  as  the  purely  imperial  revenues, 

44 


THE  TURKISH  CAMPAIGNS 


45 


which  amounted  in  all  but  to  thirteen  thousand  guldens; 
not  enough,  Charles  V.  had  once  said,  to  pay  the  ex¬ 
penses  of  the  imperial  kitchen.  The  whole  institution 
was  worn  out,  and  Puffendorf  is  not  sure  that  even  the 
extinction  of  the  House  of  Hapsburg,  devoutly  prayed  for 
by  another  writer,  would  afford  the  desired  remedy. 

In  the  midst  of  this  palsied  state  of  affairs  there  came  a 
series  of  Turkish  attacks  upon  Hungary,  as  persistent,  as 
violent,  and  as  long-continued  as  those  counter  invasions 
of  the  Christians  in  the  days  of  Godfrey  of  Bouillon 
or  Richard  III.  That  Diet  of  the  Empire  which  met  at 
Ratisbon  in  1663,  and  which,  almost  from  the  force  of 
inertia,  remained  in  session  until  the  end  of  all  things,  in 
1806,  had  been  called  together  to  take  measures  for  defence. 
A  panic  had  seized  upon  the  whole  of  Western  Christen¬ 
dom,  and,  by  imperial  decree,  in  all  parts  of  Germany  the 
so-called  Turk-bell  was  tolled  at  twelve  o’clock,  that  the 
people  might  assemble  and  offer  up  prayers  for  a  speedy 
deliverance.  From  all  the  pulpits  the  preachers  thun¬ 
dered  forth  their  warnings,  while  innumerable  pamphlets 
and  treatises  were  spread  abroad. 

It  was  no  mere  idle  threat  of  the  Grand  Vizier  Achmed 
Koprili,  that,  with  an  army  of  a  hundred  thousand  men, 
he  would  pay  a  visit  to  the  emperor  in  Vienna.  Since 
the  year  1527,  when,  through  the  battle  of  Mohacs,  it  came 
into  the  possession  of  the  Hapsburgs,  three-fourths  of  Hun¬ 
gary  had  been  lost  inch  by  inch.  Budapest  had  become 
the  seat  of  a  Turkish  pasha,  as  had  likewise  Stuhlweissen- 
burg,  the  old  coronation  place  of  the  Hungarian  kings. 
The  situation  was  the  more  perilous  for  the  house  of 
Austria  from  the  condition  of  affairs  in  Transylvania, 
where  the  Turks  were  fostering  anarchy  in  the  well- 
founded  hope  that  a  prince  might  be  chosen  as  ruler  who 
would  make  the  land  tributary  to  the  Sultan ;  while,  as 


The  Turks 
under  Ma¬ 
homet  IV. 


46 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


time  went  on,  the  stern  truth  was  borne  in  upon  the  Ger¬ 
mans  that  their  constant  enemy,  the  “most  Christian 
king,”  Louis  XIV.,  did  not  disdain  to  send  his  agents 
among  the  infidels,  inciting  them,  by  bribes  and  other¬ 
wise,  to  make  new  attacks  whenever  Hapsburg  victories 
threatened  his  own  ascendency. 

It  is  a  curious  fact  that  the  Sultan  under  whom  the 
fiercest  and  most  formidable  attacks  took  place  was  one  of 
the  weakest  that  even  Turkey  had  ever  had.  Mahomet 
IV.,  whose  reign,  like  that  of  Louis  XIV.,  of  the  Emperor 
Leopold,  and  of  the  Great  Elector,  fills  practically  the 
whole  latter  half  of  the  seventeenth  century,  —  had  come 
to  the  throne,  in  1648,  at  the  age  of  seven  years.  He  grew 
up  completely  under  the  influence  of  women,  especially 
of  his  grandmother,  who  was  all-powerful  in  the  palace 
until  at  last  she  was  strangled  by  the  party  of  his  mother. 
One  of  the  earliest  sentences  given  to  the  boy  by  his  writ¬ 
ing  master  was,  “Obey,  or  I  will  cut  off  your  head.” 
Even  when  he  grew  older,  Mahomet  was  singularly  lack¬ 
ing  in  self-will  and  independence.  In  vain  his  mother 
urged  him  to  assert  himself ;  when  he  did  so  it  was  only 
to  make  himself  ridiculous,  as  when  once  he  forbade  any 
of  his  subjects  who  were  not  Mussulmans  to  wear  red  caps 
and  yellow  slippers,  and  went  around,  sabre  in  hand,  to 
see  that  his  orders  were  executed.  He  never  commanded 
an  army,  but  contented  himself  with  handing  the  green 
standard  of  the  Prophet  to  the  grand  vizier,  and  attaching 
the  heron’s  plumes  to  the  turbans  of  his  generals.  When 
a  battle  was  in  prospect  he  spent  his  time  in  consulting 
astrologers  on  the  probable  outcome.  His  chief  passion, 
or  rather  his  craze,  was  for  hunting.  He  is  known  in  the 
ballads  of  the  time  as  the  mighty  hunter,  and  employed 
from  twenty-five  thousand  to  thirty  thousand  men  in  beat¬ 
ing  up  his  game.  A  propensity  which  cost  him  dear,  for 


THE  TURKISH  CAMPAIGNS 


47 


it  formed  one  of  the  chief  grievances  of  the  insurgents  who 
overthrew  him,  in  1687. 

How  came  it  about  that,  with  such  an  unwarlike  head, 
the  Turks  managed  to  gain  such  splendid  victories?  The 
answer  is  that,  just  as  the  old  Merovingian  kings  had 
their  mayors  of  the  palace,  so  the  Sultan  had  his  capa¬ 
ble  grand  viziers.  These,  during  Mahomet  IY.’s  reign, 
were  for  the  most  part  of  the  brave  family  of  Koprili.  The 
first  of  them  only  accepted  his  position  on  the  condition 
of  having  almost  absolute  power,  and  with  the  express 
agreement  that  no  report  of  evil  was  to  be  believed  against 
him.  He  nominated  all  officials,  and  executed  whom  he 
pleased,  the  number  of  his  victims  amounting  to  some 
thirty  thousand.  But  there  was  a  limit  to  the  influence 
even  of  men  like  these.  It  was  absolutely  necessary  for 
them  to  achieve  popularity  by  means  of  brilliant  victories 
against  foreign  enemies,  and  that  is  what  led  them  into 
their  wars  with  the  empire.  Into  the  details  of  these 
different  campaigns  it  is  not  possible  here  to  enter.  The 
Germans,  with  occasional  scanty  aid  from  other  nations, 
fought  in  a  number  of  bloody  battles,  often  against  over¬ 
whelming  odds,  but  with  such  results,  on  the  whole,  that 
the  museums  of  Vienna,  Karlsruhe,  and  Dresden  are  full 
to-day  of  rich  booty,  of  armor,  of  trappings,  and  of  silken 
hangings. 

It  was  found  at  the  Diet  of  Ratisbon  that,  even  in  the 
face  of  the  danger  from  the  Turks,  there  was  no  unity 
among  the  estates  of  the  empire,  each  petty  prince  consid¬ 
ering  his  own  real  or  fancied  grievances  as  of  more  impor¬ 
tance  than  a  foreign  war.  A  levy  of  thirty  thousand  men 
was  at  last  voted,  but  the  contingents  were  apportioned 
according  to  the  long-antiquated  ReichsmatriJcel ,  or  impe¬ 
rial  schedule,  and,  in  reality,  not  two-thirds  of  that  number 
ever  came  together.  The  Emperor  Leopold  was  obliged 


The  Peace 
of  Vasvar. 


48 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  siege 
of  Vienna. 


to  accept  aid  from  the  Rhine  Confederation,  which  had 
been  formed  to  keep  a  watch  upon  himself,  and  even  from 
Louis  XIV.  — allies  whom  he  so  hated  and  feared  that,  after 
they  had  helped  him  to  win  the  battle  of  St.  Gothard,  in 
which  three  pashas  and  fourteen  thousand  other  Moham¬ 
medans  fell,  he  hurriedly  closed  with  the  Porte  the  Peace 
of  Vasvar,  in  1664.  More  properly  speaking,  this  was  a 
twenty  years’  truce,  and  during  its  continuance  the  empire 
engaged  in  French  wars,  with  little  molestation  on  its  east¬ 
ern  borders,  except  from  Hungarian  rebels,  who,  in  16T7, 
entered  into  a  formal  alliance  with  France.  The  young 
pretender  to  the  Hungarian  throne,  Emmerich  Tokoly,  in- 
scribedon  his  coins  the  name  of  his  “  Protector”  Louis  XIV. 

But  more  important  for  Tokoly  was  the  winning  over  to 
his  cause  of  Kara  Mustapha,  the  then  grand  vizier,  who, 
having  been  worsted  at  this  time  (1682)  in  a  war  with  King 
John  Sobieski  of  Poland,  was  thirsting  for  a  new  enterprise 
in  order  to  maintain  his  tottering  prestige.  Now  took  place 
that  march  on  Vienna  which  had  been  threatened  so  many 
years  before.  Not  the  one  hundred  thousand  of  Achmed 
Koprili,  but  a  flood  of  twice  that  number  rolled  up  to  the 
walls  of  the  Austrian  capital,  and  seemed  about  to  beat 
them  down.  Few  sieges  are  more  famous  in  history;  few 
defences  more  worthy  of  praise.  The  emperor,  indeed, 
was  better  able  to  meet  the  danger  of  invasion  than  he 
had  been  nineteen  years  before ;  and  this  time  he  rejected 
the  treacherous  offers  of  Louis  XIV.  His  warmest  allies 
were  John  Sobieski  and  the  Pope  of  Rome,  the  latter  fear¬ 
ing  for  the  safety  of  the  Eternal  City  itself  should  Vienna 
fall  a  prey  to  the  infidel.  One  friend,  indeed,  on  whom 
he  had  counted,  the  Great  Elector,  sent  him  no  aid  at  all, 
being  fast  in  the  toils  of  France,  and  having  made  his 
offer  of  sixteen  thousand  men  contingent  on  shameful 
conditions. 


THE  TURKISH  CAMPAIGNS 


49 


The  garrison  which,  for  two  long  months,  aided  by  the 
students  and  guild  merchants,  defended  Vienna,  num¬ 
bered  only  eleven  thousand  men;  but  at  the  critical 
moment  of  the  siege,  when  the  subterranean  mines  of  the 
enemy  had  already  wrought  much  havoc,  when  night  after 
night  from  the  tower  of  St.  Stephen’s  rockets  of  distress 
had  been  sent  up  in  token  of  the  last  extremity,  John 
Sobieski  and  the  imperial  commander,  the  Duke  of  Lor¬ 
raine,  appeared  without  the  walls,  and,  after  a  battle 
which  lasted  from  dawn  until  late  evening,  put  to  flight 
the  colossal  army  of  the  grand  vizier  (September  12,  1683). 
A  rich  booty  was  secured,  including  Kara  Mustapha’s  own 
magnificent  tent.  It  is  the  same  enormous  silken  struc¬ 
ture  which  now,  adorned  with  the  weapons  and  other  arti¬ 
cles  that  were  in  it  at  the  time  of  its  capture,  stands  in 
the  Johan  neum,  a  wing  of  the  castle  at  Dresden.  The 
Sultan  promptly  ordered  the  strangulation  of  his  unfor¬ 
tunate  commander-in-chief,  and  proceeded  to  organize  a 
new  army ;  but  the  emperor  and  his  allies,  encouraged  by 
their  success,  determined  at  all  costs  to  rid  Christendom 
of  this  constant  thorn  in  the  flesh.  At  a  great  sacrifice  a 
twenty  years’  truce  was  concluded  with  Louis  XIV.,  and 
the  latter  was  left  for  the  present  to  enjoy  the  fruits  of  his 
new  and  unprecedented  policy  of  aggression. 

All  along  the  line  now,  by  Austrians,  Venetians,  Poles, 
and  by  the  mercenaries  of  the  Pope,  the  struggle  was  taken 
up  against  the  Turk,  and  not  only  in  Hungary,  but  also 
in  Greece.  It  was  in  the  course  of  this  war  that  the 
Acropolis  of  Athens  was  made  a  ruin  by  a  Venetian  bomb 
falling  into  a  Turkish  powder  magazine.  A  real  enthu¬ 
siasm  seized  on  Europe ;  a  new  glory,  even,  shone  around 
the  old  institution  of  the  empire:  was  not  a  venerable 
emperor,  for  the  first  time  in  many  centuries,  at  the  head 
of  a  really  grand  undertaking?  Louis  XIV.  alone  looked 


Jealousy  of 
Louis  XIV. 


VOL.  II  —  E 


50 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Louis  of 
Baden  and 
Eugene  of 
Savoy. 


on  askance,  and  punished  French  princes  who  took  part  in 
the  war;  for  it  was  openly  acknowledged  at  his  court  that 
the  feebleness  of  the  empire  made  the  grandeur  of  France. 
Gradually  almost  the  whole  of  Hungary  was  cleansed 
from  the  invaders;  Budapest  fell  in  1686,  and  in  the  year 
following  a  victory  at  Mohacs  rendered  it  possible  to 
presage  the  end  of  the  war.  A  few  months  later  a  Hun¬ 
garian  diet,  held  at  Pressburg,  voted  that  the  crown  of 
St.  Stephen  should  for  all  time  be  made  hereditary  in  the 
house  of  Hapsburg ;  it  was  the  birthday  of  the  Austrian- 
Hungarian  nation.  The  French  king’s  jealousy  rose  to 
the  highest  pitch,  and,  isolated  as  he  was  at  this  time  in 
Europe,  and  feeling  that  his  only  salvation  lay  in  sudden 
action,  he  launched  his  forces  on  the  borders  of  the  empire 
and  commenced  his  fierce  devastation  of  the  Palatinate. 
Thus  Austria’s  old  dread  was  realized,  and  she  was  in¬ 
volved  in  a  double  struggle  that  lasted  for  nearly  a  decade. 

On  the  eastern  scene  of  war,  which  alone  concerns  us 
here,  her  fortunes  varied  with  the  character  and  daring  of 
the  heads  of  her  armies.  In  Louis  of  Baden,  who,  in 
1691,  won  the  bloody  battle  of  Slankamen,  she  had  found 
a  general  of  the  highest  order;  but  his  services  were 
needed  in  the  west,  and  his  successor,  Augustus  the 
Strong  of  Saxony,  who  received  the  chief  command  only 
in  consideration  of  the  large  contingent  he  had  brought, 
fought  two  campaigns  with  very  small  results.  For¬ 
tunately  for  Austria,  fortunately,  indeed,  for  every  one 
but  himself,  a  higher  honor  even  than  that  of  imperial 
generalissimo  beckoned  to  him  in  the  distance  and  led 
him  to  resign  his  position.  This  was  the  crown  of  Poland, 
made  vacant,  in  1696,  by  the  death  of  John  Sobieski. 
Countless  candidates  were  in  the  field,  the  strongest  a 
prince  of  Cond6,  who  was  backed  by  all  the  might  of 
Louis  XIY. ;  but  by  diplomatic  skill,  by  bribery  and  in- 


i 


THE  TURKISH  CAMPAIGNS 


51 


timidation,  by  abandoning  the  Protestant  faith,  which 
his  own  land  had  been  the  first  to  adopt,  Augustus  won 
the  day,  and  was  crowned  at  Cracow  in  the  new  year. 
The  place  of  Augustus  in  the  army  was  taken  by  the  tal¬ 
ented  Prince  Eugene  of  Savoy,  who  thus  inaugurated  one 
of  the  great  military  careers  in  the  world’s  history.  A 
provider  and  husbander  of  resources,  as  well  as  a  leader 
of  armies,  he  set  to  work  with  a  firm  hand  to  organize  the 
finances,  which  he  found  in  the  worst  possible  condition, 
with  debts  of  enormous  proportions,  and  with  the  whole 
task  of  provisioning  in  the  hands  of  Jews,  who  had  made 
their  profit  without  fulfilling  the  conditions.  In  spite  of 
all  difficulties  and  drawbacks,  Eugene  soon  gave  an  earnest 
of  what  might  be  expected  of  him,  and  set  Europe  ring¬ 
ing  with  the  fame  of  his  extraordinary  victory  at  Zenta, 
where  the  Turks  lost  thirty  thousand,  the  Austrians  but 
fifteen  hundred  men.  From  the  farther  bank  of  the  river 
the  new  Sultan  himself  witnessed  this  crushing  defeat 
of  his  troops,  and  in  a  state  bordering  on  madness  fled  to 
Temesvar.  Even  the  great  seal  which  the  Grand  Vizier 
wore  around  his  neck  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Germans. 

By  this  time  the  inevitable  and  all-embracing  struggle 
for  the  inheritance  of  the  last  Spanish  Hapsburg  was  loom¬ 
ing  nearer  and  nearer.  The  emperor  needed  his  hands  free 
for  the  new  enterprise,  and  was  glad,  in  1699,  to  sign  the 
Peace  of  Carlowitz,  which  ended  the  Turkish  war  for  the 
time  being,  and  insured  him  the  possession  of  nearly  all 
Hungary  and  Transylvania.  In  a  later  war,  in  1718, 
Austria  managed  to  extend  her  boundaries  considerably 
farther  to  the  eastward;  but,  later  still,  in  the  unfortunate 
campaigns  from  1736  to  1739,  she  lost  all  these  hard- 
earned  advantages,  and  the  final  Peace  of  Belgrade  left 
her  almost  where  she  was  at  the  time  of  Carlowitz. 

If  from  the  Turkish  wars  we  turn  to  the  complications 


52 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  “devo¬ 
lution  war” 
of  Louis 
XIY. 


with  the  “grand  monarch”  of  France,  we  shall  find  that 
the  key-note  of  the  latter’s  policy  was  his  claim  to  be  right¬ 
ful  heir  to  the  throne  of  Charlemagne;  he  himself,  in  a 
series  of  instructions  drawn  up  for  the  guidance  of  his  son, 
declared  that  the  Germans  had  unlawfully  usurped  that 
heritage,  while,  to  be  still  more  definite,  one  of  his  jurists, 
a  member  of  the  Parliament  of  Paris,  showed  that  Hugo 
Capet  should  by  rights  have  succeeded  the  last  Carolin- 
gian.  By  fair  means  or  foul  Louis  XIV.  intended  some 
day  to  become  emperor  of  the  Romans,  and  at  the  time  of 
the  Peace  of  Nymwegen  he  could  definitely  count  on  the 
votes  of  three  electors ;  in  the  meantime,  on  every  possible 
pretext,  he  engaged  in  wars  of  conquest.  His  first  aim 
was  to  secure  the  Spanish  Netherlands  under  the  pretext 
that,  by  an  old  law  of  inheritance,  they  had  “devolved” 
upon  his  queen,  the  eldest  daughter  by  the  first  marriage 
of  King  Philip  IV.  of  Spain.  This  attempt  was  a  failure, 
for  Louis  had  to  reckon  with  the  coalition  known  as  the 
Triple  Alliance,  and  consisting  of  England,  Sweden,  and 
Holland ;  but  he  presently  managed  to  sunder  this  union 
by  bribes  and  by  subtle  diplomacy;  to  King  Charles 
II.  he  promised  such  subsidies  as  would  help  him  to 
realize  his  scheme  of  recatholicizing  England,  while  in 
another  direction,  Austria,  he  secured  neutrality  and 
favor,  in  1668,  by  a  secret  treaty,  dividing  up  the  great 
Spanish  inheritance  against  the  long-expected  moment 
when  the  sickly  young  king,  Carlos  II.,  should  breathe 
his  last.  Spain  itself,  as  well  as  Milan  and  the  West 
Indies  and  other  important  islands,  were  to  fall  to  the 
share  of  the  emperor,  while  Louis  was  to  have  Naples  and 
Sicily,  Franche  Comt£,  Navarre,  and  the  Philippines. 

The  way  being  thus  prepared,  having  succeeded,  too, 
in  bribing  a  number  of  German  princes,  like  the  dukes 
of  Brunswick,  and  the  bishops  of  Treves,  Cologne,  and 


THE  AGGRESSIONS  OF  LOUIS  XIV 


53 


Miinster,  Louis  XIV.  once  more  took  the  field,  opposed 
only  by  Holland  and  by  the  elector  of  Brandenburg.  To 
the  head  of  Dutch  affairs  was  now  called  that  William 
III.  of  Orange  who  later  became  king  of  England.  The 
brave  little  republic,  which  opened  its  dykes  before  the 
invading  enemy,  was  not  so  easily  crushed.  Branden¬ 
burg,  indeed,  was  a  useless  ally,  for  the  Great  Elector, 
himself  an  unsuspecting  victim,  was  involved  in  one  of 
the  most  miserable  games  of  intrigue  and  deceit  that 
policy  ever  prompted.  Very  shame  had  driven  the  Em¬ 
peror  Leopold  to  at  least  make  a  demonstration  against 
an  enemy  that  had  wantonly  broken  the  law  of  nations  and 
disregarded  the  boundaries  of  his  empire;  but,  mindful 
of  his  secret  pact  regarding  the  Spanish  inheritance,  he 
determined  to  do  no  real  harm  to  his  ally  of  France,  and, 
while  joining  his  forces  to  those  of  Frederick  William, 
his  general-in-chief,  Montecucculi,  was  secretly  ordered  to 
avoid  serious  combat.  As  an  Austrian  minister  expressed 
it,  there  was  need  of  harnessing  a  tame  and  manageable 
horse  to  this  wild  and  unbroken  steed  of  Brandenburg. 
Foiled  in  every  plan  by  which  he  had  meant  to  circum¬ 
vent  the  enemy,  looked  upon  with  scorn  by  the  Dutch, 
who  withdrew  their  subsidies  from  so  dilatory  an  ally, 
Frederick  William  withdrew  from  the  struggle  and  entered 
into  the  inglorious  Peace  of  Vossem  with  the  French 
(1673). 

A  year  later,  when  events  had  caused  Austria  to  renew 
the  struggle  with  all  seriousness,  the  elector  once  more 
took  her  side;  but  the  unaccountable  conduct  of  the  impe¬ 
rial  general,  Bournonville,  deprived  the  campaign  of  all 
good  results.  Concerted  action  finally  became  impossible. 
44  You  are  neutral,”  said  Frederick  William  to  the  Spanish 
ambassador,  who  visited  the  camp,  44and  can  tell  the  world 
what  is  going  on  here ;  I  wish  to  be  acquitted  of  all  blame. 


Austria’s 
secret  un¬ 
derstanding 
with  Louis 
XIV. 


Quarrels  of 
Bournon¬ 
ville  and 
the  Great 
Elector. 


54 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  peace 
of  Nym- 
wegen. 


At  Marlenheim,  through  Bournonville’s  obstinacy,  the 
elector  lost  a  brilliant  opportunity  of  surrounding  the 
army  of  the  French  general  Turenne,  while  the  charge 
seems  well  founded  that  at  Turkheim,  contrary  to  agree¬ 
ment,  the  Austrian  general  drew  off  his  forces,  leaving 
those  of  Frederick  William  alone  in  a  position  of  deadly 
peril.  It  was  soon  after  this  that  the  Great  Elector  was 
called  away  by  the  irruption  of  the  Swedes  into  the  Mark. 
During  the  next  years,  as  we  have  seen,  he  was  occupied  in 
the  north,  making  his  brilliant  but  fruitless  conquests. 

The  war  on  the  Rhine  still  went  on  for  nearly  four 
years.  First  came  long  manoeuvring  between  Turenne 
and  Montecucculi.  Then  came  a  series  of  battles :  at  Sas- 
bach,  where  Turenne  was  killed;  at  the  Conz  bridge  on  the 
river  Saar,  where  the  dukes  George  and  Ernest  Augustus 
of  Brunswick  covered  themselves  with  glory;  and  under 
the  walls  of  Treves.  The  French  recovered  themselves 
for  a  while,  but  the  marriage  of  William  of  Orange  to 
Mary  of  England,  in  167T,  proved  to  them  a  severe  blow; 
it  was  as  bad  for  Louis  XIV.,  said  the  English  ambassador 
at  the  time,  “as  the  loss  of  ten  battles  and  fortresses.” 
Yet  none  the  less  the  Dutch  people  clamored  for  peace. 
Charles  II.  of  England  was  as  unreliable  as  a  wavering 
reed;  and  the  French  king,  appreciating  the  situation, 
offered  to  Holland  an  arrangement  so  advantageous, 
especially  for  its  future  trade,  that  the  republic  finalty 
accepted,  leaving  the  empire  and  Brandenburg  to  the 
French  mercies.  There  were  those  who  urged  Leopold 
to  take  a  manly  stand  and  continue  the  war  on  his  own 
account,  among  them  the  Great  Elector,  who  hoped  thus 
to  secure  his  Pomeranian  conquests.  But  the  emperor, 
as  has  been  said,  hated  the  idea  of  a  “new  king  of  the 
Vandals  on  the  Baltic,”  and  signed  for  himself  at  Nym- 
wegen  a  peace  with  France  and  Sweden,  the  basis  of  which 


THE  AGGRESSIONS  OF  LOUIS  XIY 


55 


was  the  condition  of  things  in  the  year  1648.  The  wags 
of  the  time  called  this  the  peace  of  Nimm-weg ,  inasmuch 
as  here  were  taken  away  all  the  elector’s  recent  acquisi¬ 
tions.  He  was  forced,  as  we  know,  into  the  distasteful 
Peace  of  St.  Germain. 

The  French  had  reason  enough  to  be  proud  of  their 
diplomacy,  seeing  that  out  of  a  desperate  military  position 
they  had  known  how  to  draw  such  gains.  “German 
princes  will  make  no  more  war  on  me,”  said  Louis  XIY. 
to  Sophia  of  Hanover,  who  came  to  visit  her  niece,  the 
Palatine  princess  who  was  the  wife  of  Monsieur.  Louis 
considered  that  now  the  time  had  come  for  making  good 
those  claims  to  the  whole  of  Alsace  which  had  never  slum¬ 
bered  since  the  Peace  of  Westphalia.1  There  had  been 
an  effort  at  Nymwegen  to  bring  clearness  into  the  matter, 
but  the  French  had  refused  to  reopen  it,  well  knowing 
that  the  ambiguous  wording  of  those  old  clauses  would 
give  them  the  best  possible  pretext  for  the  annexations 
they  were  planning. 

By  calmly  taking  possession  of  the  defenceless  lands  he 
claimed,  and  by  propounding  a  new  and  startling  theory, 
in  defence  of  which  he  played  off  the  Turks  and  the  elector 
of  Brandenburg  against  the  emperor,  Louis  now  gained 
more  territory  than  in  many  wars,  and  stretched  the 
French  boundaries  to  the  Rhine.  He  declared  that  the 
Westphalian  Peace  had  ceded  to  him  certain  districts  with 
all  their  dependencies.  Three  “  Courts  of  Reunion  ”  were 
established,  one  at  Metz,  one  at  Breisach,  and  one  at 
Vesan9on,  to  determine  what  lands  actually  were,  and 
ever  had  been ,  dependent  on  his  new  possessions.  The 
cities  of  Metz,  Toul,  and  Verdun,  once  important  bishop¬ 
rics,  were  ordered  to  bring  in  lists  of  lands  they  had  for¬ 
merly  owned,  and  charters  were  consulted  which  reached 

i  See  Vol.  I,  p.  493. 


Louis 
XIV.  ’s  ap¬ 
propriation 
of  Alsace 
and  Lor¬ 
raine. 


56 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Strassburg 

taken. 


The 

Laxenburg 

alliance. 


as  far  back  as  to  Merovingian  times.  These  so-called 
“dependencies  ”  stretched  far  into  the  neighboring  states, 
and  men  like  the  Elector  of  the  Palatinate,  the  dukes  of 
Baden  and  Wiirteniberg,  and  even  the  king  of  Sweden, 
who  was  of  the  Palatine  line,  were  summoned  to  do 
homage  to  France. 

Even  this  hollowest  of  all  pretexts  was  lacking  for  the 
French  king’s  sudden  descent  on  the  free  city  of  Strass¬ 
burg.  That  most  important  fortress,  of  which  Charles  V. 
once  said  that,  if  he  had  to  choose  between  losing  it  and 
losing  Vienna,  he  would  relinquish  the  latter,  had  been 
expressly  excepted  when  the  ambiguous  rights  over  the 
other  Alsatian  towns  had  been  ceded  to  France  by  the 
Westphalian  Peace.  But  no  care  had  been  taken  to  garri¬ 
son  it,  and  only  four  hundred  mercenaries  were  at  hand  to 
oppose  a  French  force  of  thirty-five  thousand  men.  After 
three  days  of  negotiation  the  city  capitulated  (September 
30,  1681),  and  three  weeks  later  Louis  XIV.,  in  royal  state 
and  accompanied  by  his  whole  family,  held  a  triumphant 
entry.  Elizabeth  Charlotte,  Louis’s  sister-in-law,  fairly 
“howled,”  as  she  wrote  to  her  brother,  at  having  thus  to 
accompany  the  French  court  into  a  conquered  German 
city.  Poor  woman,  she  was  soon  to  shed  still  bitterer 
tears  at  the  wasting  and  ravaging  of  her  Palatine  home, 
ostensibly  in  her  own  interests !  For  the  present,  Louis 
contented  himself  with  the  complete  subjugation  of  Alsace 
and  Lorraine,  which  were  handed  over  to  the  Jesuits  for 
the  purpose  of  catholicizing. 

That  more  effective  opposition  was  not  offered  by  the 
empire  was  due,  as  we  know,  to  the  attitude  of  the  Great 
Elector  and  to  the  exigencies  of  the  Turkish  wars.  In 
the  agreement  entered  into  between  Louis  XI  V.  and 
Frederick  William,  in  January,  1681,  it  had  been  ex¬ 
pressly  stipulated  that  the  elector  was  not  to  inquire  into 


THE  AGGRESSIONS  OF  LOUIS  XIV 


57 


the  right  or  wrong  of  any  of  his  new  ally’s  actions.  After 
the  fall  of  Strassburg  the  status  quo  was  again  confirmed, 
Frederick  William’s  pension  being  raised  from  one  hun¬ 
dred  thousand  to  four  hundred  thousand  thalers  in  order 
to  gild  the  bitter  pill. 

After  Strassburg’s  fall  a  demonstration  at  least  was 
made  in  the  shape  of  the  Laxenburg  alliance,  an  associa¬ 
tion  of  small  German  powers,  headed  by  the  Count  of 
Waldeck,  and  finally  joined  by  the  emperor;  its  avowed 
object  was  to  see  that  the  peace  treaties  of  Westphalia 
and  Nymwegen  were  properly  observed,  for  which  purpose 
three  armies  were  to  be  maintained,  one  on  the  upper, 
one  on  the  middle,  and  one  on  the  lower  Rhine.  Shortly 
afterward  Bavaria  formed  its  own  defensive  alliance  with 
Leopold,  while  Saxony  and  Brunswick  prepared  to  do  the 
same. 

But  the  advent  of  Kara  Mustapha  and  the  siege  of 
Vienna  took  away  the  last  lingering  thought  of  plunging 
into  a  French  war.  In  order  to  have  his  hands  free  for 
his  new  undertakings  against  the  Turks,  Leopold,  in 
1684,  closed,  as  we  have  seen,1  a  twenty  years’  truce  with 
Louis  XIV.,  expressly  guaranteeing  to  the  latter  Strass¬ 
burg  and  all  the  territories  acquired  through  the  decisions 
of  the  “Courts  of  Reunion.” 

The  French  armies  in  the  meantime  had  won  Casale  in 
Italy  and  Luxemburg  in  the  Spanish  Netherlands,  for¬ 
tresses  which,  with  Strassburg,  seemed  to  give  them  a  vice- 
like  hold  on  all  Europe.  One  of  Louis  XIV. ’s  flatterers, 
in  carving  the  pedestal  of  a  column  of  victory,  represented 
the  German  Empire  in  the  form  of  a  bound  slave  at  the 
feet  of  the  vir  immortalis ! 

But  gradually,  as  the  Turkish  war  went  on,  and  impe¬ 
rial  victories  succeeded  each  other,  the  French  king  was 


A  rallying 
of  forces 
against 
Louis  XIV. 


i  See  Vol.  II,  p.  49. 


58 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  devas¬ 
tation  of  the 
Palatinate. 


obliged  to  confess  to  himself  that  a  great  change  was 
coming  over  the  political  face  of  Europe.  The  young 
elector  of  Bavaria,  Max  Emmanuel,  married  the  daughter 
of  Leopold,  and  showed  disquieting  designs  on  the  Span¬ 
ish  inheritance,  which  Louis  had  come  to  consider  so 
entirely  his  own  perquisite.  Carlos  II.  himself,  the  child¬ 
less  king  whose  death  had  already  been  so  many  times  dis¬ 
counted  in  the  past  twenty  years,  was  enamoured  of  the 
idea  of  having  Max  Emmanuel  as  his  successor,  and  openly 
declared  in  the  young  prince’s  favor;  the  Spanish  people 
treated  him  like  one  of  the  royal  family.  In  the  empire 
itself  one  prince  after  another  went  over  to  the  Austrian 
side,  while  the  Laxenburg  alliance  came  to  life  again  in 
the  enlarged  form  of  the  Augsburg  League.  The  Great 
Elector,  too,  as  already  shown,  grew  tired  of  the  French 
alliance  after  the  revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes,  and 
entered  into  negotiations  with  Leopold  for  the  recognition 
of  his  Silesian  claims ;  while  in  England,  James  II.,  Louis’s 
faithful  friend,  was  displaced  by  William  of  Orange,  his 
bitter  enemy,  who  was  already  in  constant  communication 
with  Frederick  William. 

In  the  end  Louis  XIV.,  hoping  to  nip  the  coalition  plans 
of  his  enemies  in  the  bud,  proceeded  in  a  perfectly  ruth¬ 
less  and  unheard-of  manner  to  strike  terror  into  their 
hearts,  and  began  a  nine  years’  war  that  started  with  the 
terrible  devastation  of  the  Rhine  Palatinate.  He  issued 
a  manifesto  accusing  the  emperor  of  intriguing  against 
France,  and  launched  his  armies  across  the  Rhine.  The 
Germans,  whose  vast  forces  had  gone  to  fight  the  Turks 
in  Hungary,  were  surprised  in  an  almost  defenceless  con¬ 
dition.  The  fortress  of  Philipsburg  alone  made  a  show 
of  resistance,  and  in  the  course  of  a  few  short  weeks  four 
electorates,  Mainz,  Treves,  Cologne,  and  the  Palatinate 
were  in  French  hands. 


THE  AGGRESSIONS  OF  LOUIS  XIV 


59 


Leopold  answered  by  a  counter  manifesto,  which  the 
great  Leibnitz  is  believed  to  have  composed,  and  pro¬ 
ceeded  to  strengthen  his  alliances  without  abandoning 
the  Turkish  war.  Some  scruples  he  had  about  joining 
with  a  Protestant  country  like  Holland  against  a  Catholic 
monarch;  but  his  Jesuits  drew  up  a  remarkable  document 
which  quieted  his  conscience.  “  In  a  justifiable  war,  ”  they 
said,  “it  is  allowable  to  make  use  of  horses  and  other 
beasts  —  consequently,  also,  of  unbelievers!”  By  the 
Treaty  of  1689,  the  Dutch  bound  themselves  not  only  to 
assist  the  emperor  in  the  present  crisis,  but  also  to  stand 
by  him  in  the  matter  of  the  Spanish  succession.  But 
already  the  hand  of  the  destroyer  had  fallen  with  all  its 
weight  on  the  fertile  Rhenish  lands ;  the  order  had  gone 
forth  to  thro w  down  all  the  forts  of  the  Palatinate  and  to  level 
some  twelve  hundred  cities  and  villages  with  the  ground. 

Louis’s  minister,  Louvois,  based  his  orders  for  destruc¬ 
tion  on  purely  military  grounds.  France  was  threatened 
on  all  sides  —  from  the  Channel,  from  the  Pyrenees,  and 
from  the  Rhine.  Her  armies  could  not  be  everywhere,  and 
her  best  defence  against  the  empire,  he  argued,  would  be 
a  long  line  of  desert,  with  not  roof  enough  to  shelter  a 
single  German  soldier.  It  is  true  the  French  commanders 
had  first  to  be  educated  to  this  policy  of  annihilation. 
One  of  them,  General  de  Tess6,  ordered  the  citizens  of 
Heidelberg  to  set  fire  to  their  own  houses,  but  promised 
to  look  the  other  way  while  they  were  putting  out  the 
flames.  He  was  complained  of,  and  received  a  severe 
reprimand  from  Paris.  It  was  in  these  days  that  the  first 
attempt  at  destroying  the  splendid  Heidelberg  castle  was 
made ;  its  treasures  were  robbed,  its  columns  thrown  down, 
its  walls  undermined,  and  great  masses  of  straw  heaped 
up  in  its  halls  and  set  on  fire.  The  former  garrison 
watched  mournfully  in  the  courtyard  while  a  part  of  the 


The  castle 
of  Heidel¬ 
berg  laid  in 
ruins. 


60 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  “  war 
of  the  spade 
and  hoe.” 


great  roof  fell  in.  A  few  days  later  the  whole  town  of 
Mannheim  went  up  in  flames,  and  the  destroyers  passed 
on  to  the  old,  free,  imperial  city  of  Spires.  Here  the 
inhabitants  were  told  that  they  might  transfer  their  valu¬ 
able  effects  to  the  cathedral,  which  alone  would  be  left 
standing ;  but  this  famous  monument,  too,  by  chance  or,  as 
many  believed,  by  premeditation,  was  also  burned.  The 
vaults  containing  the  bones  of  Henry  IV.  and  of  other 
emperors  were  opened  and  plundered.  The  turn  of 
W orms  came  next ;  the  same  promise  with  regard  to  the 
cathedral  was  here  given,  but  was  expressly  revoked  by  a 
command  from  Paris.  “  To  the  inhuman  delight  of  this 
mad  monster”  (Louis  XIV.),  says  one  of  the  emperor’s 
officials  in  W orms,  “  the  city  was  reduced  to  ashes  within 
four  hours.  .  .  .  Like  a  column  of  cloud  the  smoke  rose  up, 
wound  slowly  across  the  Rhine,  and  hid  the  light  of  day.” 

One  can  imagine  the  feelings  of  Elizabeth  Charlotte  at 
hearing  of  the  devastation  in  her  old  home.  In  his  mani¬ 
festo  to  the  emperor,  one  of  Louis  XIV. ’s  grievances  had 
been  that  his  sister-in-law  was  not  recognized  as  heiress 
to  the  Palatinate.  “  I  cannot  cease  mourning  and  bewail¬ 
ing,”  writes  “ Madame”  to  her  aunt,  “that  I  have  been, 
so  to  speak,  the  ruin  of  my  fatherland.  .  .  .  Every  night 
when  I  go  to  sleep  I  seem  to  be  transported  to  Heidelberg 
or  to  Mannheim,  and  to  see  all  the  devastation;  then  I 
leap  up  in  my  bed  and  lie  awake  for  two  full  hours.  I 
call  to  mind  in  what  a  state  it  all  was  in  my  time,  and  how 
it  is  now ;  yes,  what  I  myself  have  become  —  and  I  cannot 
keep  from  weeping.  .  .  .  They  take  it  ill  here  that  I 
grieve  over  these  matters,  but  truly  I  cannot  do  other¬ 
wise.”  Those  who  look  on  the  long  line  of  ruined  castles 
along  that  part  of  the  Neckar  and  Rhine,  can  sympathize 
with  “Lise  Lotta.” 

Even  from  Louis  XIV. ’s  own  point  of  view,  the  devas- 


THE  AGGRESSIONS  OF  LOUIS  XIV 


61 


tation  of  the  Palatinate  proved  a  failure.  He  had  hoped 
by  this  one  bold  stroke  to  crush  the  Germans,  so  that  he 
might  then  turn  and  get  the  better  of  his  other  enemies; 
he  became  involved,  instead,  in  that  long,  dreary  struggle 
along  the  whole  length  of  the  Rhine,  which  goes  by  the 
name  of  the  “war  of  the  spade  and  hoe,”  because  of  the 
insignificance  of  its  actual  engagements.  The  French, 
indeed,  except  in  the  first  and  last  years  of  the  war,  were 
generally  in  the  ascendent ;  they  lost  the  towns  of  Bonn 
and  Mainz,  but  won  small  battles  at  Mons,  Namur,  and 
Steenkirke,  at  Fleurus,  Neerwinden,  and  Landen,  not  to 
mention  Staffarda  and  Nice.  These,  however,  were  vic¬ 
tories  which  decided  nothing,  and  their  own  land,  mean¬ 
while,  began  to  groan  under  its  heavy  burdens.  A  French 
army,  too,  which  accompanied  James  II.  to  Ireland,  was 
defeated  in  the  great  battle  on  the  Boyne ;  while  the  French 
fleet,  in  1692,  was  fairly  swept  from  the  seas  at  Cape  La 
Hogue  by  the  English  and  the  Dutch. 

In  the  imperial  camp  matters  were  in  a  wretched  condi¬ 
tion,  largely  owing  to  the  fact  that  the  best  officers  and 
soldiers  were  needed  in  Hungary.  Y ear  after  year,  too, 
quarrels  had  arisen  among  the  different  German  states 
with  regard  to  subsidies,  to  the  requisite  contingents,  and, 
above  all,  to  the  apportionment  of  winter  quarters. 

A  general  sluggishness,  much  inefficiency,  and,  occa¬ 
sionally,  glaring  cases  of  cowardice  and  treason,  came  to 
light  even  among  those  in  the  highest  places.  Max 
Emmanuel  of  Bavaria  misappropriated  Spanish  funds; 
Amadeus  of  Savoy  played  a  most  deceitful  r61e,  and  finally 
left  the  Germans  and  went  over  to  the  French  with  his 
whole  army.  Heddersdorf,  the  German  commmandant  of 
Heidelberg,  pusillanimously  allowed  the  French,  in  1693, 
to  complete  the  work  of  destruction  they  had  begun  four 
years  earlier.  The  castle,  to  which  the  citizens  had  fled 


The  com¬ 
mandant  of 
Heidelberg 
castle. 


62 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  estab¬ 
lishment  of 
a  ninth 
electorate. 


I 


from  their  own  flaming  houses,  might  well  have  been  held 
until  the  Margrave  of  Baden  could  come  to  its  aid;  but 
Heddersdorf,  in  an  agony  of  fear,  shut  himself  up  in  his 
own  apartment,  and  took  no  measures  whatever  for  defence. 
He  atoned  for  his  cowardice  by  the  severest  punishments 
that  could  possibly  be  inflicted  on  a  soldier  or  a  man  of 
honor.  The  Teutonic  Order,  of  which  he  was  a  member, 
had  his  cross  taken  off  and  flung  in  his  face,  and  then  lit¬ 
erally  kicked  him  out  of  a  door  in  token  of  expulsion.  By 
order  of  the  military  authorities,  he  was  then  bound  and 
thrown  into  a  cart,  and  paraded  before  his  own  regiment  as 
a  common  criminal.  His  sword  was  publicly  broken,  and 
he  slunk  into  banishment,  not  to  be  heard  of  again  until 
his  death,  thirty-five  years  later,  in  a  nunnery  at  Hildes- 
heim !  Such  was  the  fate  of  the  man  to  whose  fault  was 
attributable  the  completeness  of  that  ruin,  so  famous  for 
many  generations,  which  has  only  now,  within  the  last 
few  years,  been  restored  to  its  original  form. 

A  lasting  memorial  of  the  emperor’s  straits  and  diffi¬ 
culties  at  this  time,  was  the  establishment  in  the  House  of 
Hanover  of  a  ninth  electorate.  How  persistently  had 
Leopold  hitherto  refused  this  favor !  He  could  not  endure 
the  thought  of  another  Protestant  vote  in  the  body  that 
had  charge  of  the  future  of  his  children.  But  Ernest 
Augustus  of  Hanover  was  master  of  a  strong  state  and 
had,  besides,  warm  friends  at  court.  No  one  of  the  Ger¬ 
man  princes  beneath  the  rank  of  elector  could  begin  to 
compete  with  him  in  the  number  of  soldiers  he  could  put 
in  the  field.  He  had  brought  it  about  that  his  own  lands, 
which  only  a  generation  back  had  been  in  the  hands  of 
four  different  lines,  should  in  the  future  be  united ;  sealing 
his  final  compact  with  his  brother,  George  William  of  Celle, 
by  allowing  his  son,  afterwards  George  I.  of  England,  to 
“contaminate  his  ancestors”  to  the  extent  of  marrying 


THE  AGGRESSIONS  OF  LOUIS  XIV 


63 


George  William’s  legitimatized  daughter,  Sophia  Doro¬ 
thea.  Of  all  unfortunate  unions  this  was  the  worst,  save 
in  the  one  particular  of  dynastic  advantage.  Treated  from 
the  first  with  cold,  cutting  contempt,  detected  in  a  plan 
to  run  away  with  the  notorious  Swede,  Konigsmark,  who 
was  probably  a  spy  of  her  husband’s  enemies,  the  princess 
was  relegated  to  the  castle  of  Ahlden,  where  she  lived 
alone,  under  watch  and  ward,  for  thirty  years.  Ernest 
Augustus  was  ably  seconded  in  his  long  struggle  for  the 
electoral  dignity  by  his  son-in-law,  Frederick  of  Branden¬ 
burg;  but  he  owed  most  to  the  skilful  manner  in  which 
he  played  his  own  cards.  He  knew  well  how  to  draw 
every  advantage  from  the  emperor’s  critical  situation ;  and 
at  last  fairly  stormed  Leopold’s  defences  by  threatening 
to  put  himself  at  the  head  of  an  independent  third  party, 
to  consist,  in  addition  to  Hanover,  of  Sweden,  Munster, 
and  Saxony.  The  emperor  yielded  so  completely  that,  in 
return  for  some  eight  hundred  men  and  a  general  promise 
of  support  and  friendship,  he  granted  Ernest  Augustus’s 
wish  in  the  teeth  of  a  strong  opposition,  not  only  from  the 
electoral  college,  but  from  the  whole  body  of  minor  princes. 

The  emperor’s  patent  was  dated  1692,  but  not  until  six¬ 
teen  years  later  was  Hanover  formally  recognized  as  having 
a  full  right  to  its  new  vote. 

As  the  years  of  the  dreary  war  rolled  on,  matters  began  The  Peace 
to  wear  a  brighter  aspect  for  the  imperialists,  and  various  ofRyswick, 
considerations  rendered  Louis  XIV.  more  inclined  for 
peace.  He  lost  Namur  in  1695,  and  Casale  in  the  same 
year;  a  plot  of  the  Jacobins,  under  his  auspices,  to  mur¬ 
der  William  of  Holland  and  bring  back  the  Stuarts  on  the 
English  throne,  was  betrayed  and  failed;  a  severe  illness 
of  Carlos  II.  brought  home  the  fact  that  the  moment  might 
be  at  hand  when  France  would  need  every  friend  she 
could  possibly  make.  Under  these  circumstances  Louis 


64 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The 

‘  ‘  Ryswick 
clause.” 


determined  to  take  a  downward  step  from  the  pedestal  on 
which  he  had  placed  himself,  to  abandon  his  Stuart  pro- 
t^gds,  and  acknowledge  William  as  king  of  England.  A 
congress,  accordingly,  was  called  to  meet  at  Ryswick,  a 
village  between  Delft  and  The  Hague.  The  sessions 
were  held  in  an  old  castle  admirably  adapted  for  the 
purpose  in  hand.  This  castle  consisted  of  a  great  central 
building,  which  was  given  over  to  the  Swedes  as  mediators, 
and  of  two  wings,  each  with  its  own  entrance,  so  that  the 
Anglo-imperial  and  French  envoys  could  pass  in  and  out 
without  meeting  or  greeting  each  other.  Not  until  after 
two  months  had  passed  in  indirect  negotiation,  and  after 
the  momentous  question  had  been  settled  as  to  the  order 
in  which  they  should  enter  the  neutral  rooms,  did  they 
come  face  to  face. 

Here  at  Ryswick,  more  cleverly  even  than  at  Nym- 
wegen,  did  Louis  manage  to  circumvent  the  Germans. 
With  mathematical  accuracy  he  solved  the  problem  of 
pacifying  three  opponents  so  as  to  reap  every  advantage 
over  the  fourth.  Once  more  the  Dutch  were  propitiated 
by  favorable  trading  privileges ;  the  English  were  won  by 
the  formal  recognition  of  their  king.  The  Spaniards,  too, 
were  rendered  harmless  by  the  return  of  Luxemburg  and 
other  places  in  the  Netherlands.  Louis  knew  well  that 
no  one  of  these  powers  would  risk  its  newly  acquired 
gains  in  order  to  hinder  his  designs  on  the  empire.  In 
fact,  they  all  three  signed  their  own  agreements  without 
waiting  to  see  what  would  be  done  by  Austria. 

The  negotiations  at  Ryswick  had  been  entered  into  with 
the  assumption  that  the  Peace  of  Nymwegen  should  be  the 
basis  of  accord,  that  Strassburg  and  all  the  annexations 
made  through  the  Reunion  Courts  should  be  returned  to 
the  empire,  and  that  religious  toleration  should  prevail 
in  the  restored  lands.  But  France,  as  usual,  had  woven 


THE  SPANISH  SUCCESSION  WAR 


65 


around  her  concessions  a  web  of  saving  clauses.  She  had 
promised  Strassburg  “or  an  equivalent,”  and  even  that 
arrangement  was,  after  a  certain  date,  declared  to  have 
lapsed.  She  had  promised  religious  toleration  “  until  the 
making  of  some  other  agreement”;  but  when  no  other 
agreement  found  her  approval,  she  suddenly,  with  the 
treaty  on  the  very  point  of  being  concluded,  made  the 
categorical  demand  that  the  Catholic  religion  should  be 
upheld  in  whatever  districts  it  had  once  been  introduced. 

This  was  the  famous  “  Ryswick  clause  ”  that  settled  the 
religious  future  of  some  two  thousand  towns  and  villages. 

It  came  like  a  thunderbolt  out  of  a  clear  sky,  but  the  luke¬ 
warm  attitude  of  England  and  Holland,  and  the  massing 
of  140,000  Frenchmen  near  the  German  border,  made 
resistance  impossible.  Some  went  so  far,  indeed,  as  to 
say  that  the  two  Catholic  sovereigns  were  in  collusion 
on  this  point;  yet  this  would  seem  improbable  in  view 
of  the  severity  of  the  general  terms  imposed  upon  Austria. 

So  humiliating  were  these  terms  that  the  news-leaves  of 
the  day  took  up  the  old  play  upon  words,  and  declared 
that  this  was  no  longer  a  case  of  Nimm-weg ,  or  “take 
away,”  but  of  Reiss-weg ,  or  “ tear  asunder.”  The  Peace 
of  Ryswick  was  finally  signed  in  169T,  but  many  believed 
that,  at  the  time,  it  would  not  be  permanent.  It  was 
pointed  out  that  France  had  not  dismissed  her  regiments, 
but,  instead,  was  offering  double  pay  to  former  mercenaries 
of  the  empire.  Latet  anguis  in  herba ,  “the  snake  still 
lies  hidden  in  the  grass,”  was  the  warning  cry  of  an 
earnest  patriot. 

For  the  present,  indeed,  in  view  of  the  exhausted  state  The 
of  his  finances,  it  was  Louis  XIV.’s  intention  to  steer  sPanisl1  in‘ 

•  heritance 

clear  of  war.  He  applied  himself,  instead,  to  so  directing 
the  politics  of  Europe  that,  when  the  long-expected  crisis 
should  come,  his  enemies  would  be  disunited  and  he  him- 


VOL.  II  —  F 


66 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Austrian 
and  French 
claims. 


self  master  oh  the  situation.  He  was  determined  to  have, 
if  not  the  whole,  at  least  a  large  part,  of  the  rich  inheri¬ 
tance  of  the  last  Spanish  Hapsburg  —  an  inheritance  em¬ 
bracing  points  as  far  distant  as  Cuba  and  the  Philippines, 
and  of  which  one  could  therefore  truly  say  that  on  it  the 
sun  never  set.  But  the  difficulties  in  the  way  were  very 
great.  With  the  West  Indies,  for  instance,  England 
and  Holland  had  developed  an  immense  trade;  should 
these  islands,  as  well  as  the  coasts  of  Spain  and  Italy, 
be  appropriated  by  France,  or  should  the  exports  to  these 
havens,  as  well  as  the  imports  of  precious  metals  and  of 
the  usual  colonial  products,  be  stopped,  the  Dutch  and 
English  commerce  would  be  ruined.  The  only  solutions 
of  the  question  for  these  two  maritime  powers  were  the 
giving  of  the  whole  inheritance  neither  to  Austria  nor  to 
France,  but  to  some  third  power,  or  else  a  general  divi¬ 
sion.  This  last  alternative  was  accepted  by  Louis  XIV., 
who  saw  that  something  must  be  sacrificed  in  order  to 
prevent  England  and  Holland,  not  to  speak  of  Spain, 
from  making  common  cause  with  Austria.  He  accord¬ 
ingly,  after  much  negotiation,  entered  into  the  so-called 
first  partition  treaty  with  William  of  Orange. 

In  order  to  find  some  thread  through  the  intricacies  of 
this  Spanish  succession  question,  it  is  necessary  to  hold 
in  mind  the  Hapsburg  genealogy  back  to  the  time  of 
Philip  II.,  in  whose  favor  Charles  V.  had  abdicated  his 
Spanish,  Italian,  Netherland,  and  colonial  claims.  When 
Philip  II  . ’s  son,  Philip  III.,  died,  in  1621,  he  left  two 
children  besides  Philip  IV.,  who  died  in  1665:  Anna 
Maria,  who  became  the  queen  of  Louis  XIII.  of  France, 
and  Maria  Anna,  who  married  the  Emperor  Ferdinand  III. 
Louis  XIV.  sprang  from  the  one  jniion,  Leopold  I.  from 
the  other.  Nor  was  this  the  only  tie  that  bound  the 
French  and  Austrian  monarchs  to  the  Spanish  house,  for 


THE  SPANISH  SUCCESSION  WAR 


67 


Louis  XIV.  had  married  the  one  daughter,  Leopold  the 
other,  of  Philip  IV.  It  might  be  supposed  that  as  both 
Louis  XIV.  ’s  mother  and  his  wife  were  older  than  their 
respective  sisters,  their  claim  should  have  had  the  prefer¬ 
ence  upon  the  failure  of  the  male  line ;  but  to  equalize  this 
there  came  in  formal  renunciations  of  the  throne,  signed 
at  the  time  of  the  French  marriages,  although  Louis  XIV. 
maintained  that  the  dowry  for  which  his  wife  had  sold  her 
birthright  had  never  been  paid.  Philip  IV.,  for  his  part, 
had  always  intended  that  his  younger  daughter  should 
eventually  inherit  his  crown ;  he  even  left  a  provision  in 
his  will  that  on  her  decease  her  husband  should  be  her 
heir. 

As  now,  with  the  waning  century,  Carlos  II.  drew  near  The 
to  his  end,  the  difficulty  of  settling  the  matter  became  partition 
more  and  more  apparent.  The .  Spanish  people  had  wel-  treaties* 
corned  the  candidacy  of  the  Bavarian  elector,  Max  Em¬ 
manuel,  who  had  married  Leopold’s  daughter;  when,  in 
1694,  a  son,  Joseph  Ferdinand,  was  born  to  this  pair,  he, 
in  turn,  became  the  hope,  not  only  of  Spain,  but  also  of 
England  and  Holland.  Here  was  a  prince,  neither  Haps- 
burg  nor  Bourbon,  on  whom,  as  it  seemed,  all  could  unite. 

It  was  with  reference  to  him  that  the  first  partition 
treaty  was  made;  he  was  to  have  Spain,  the  Netherlands, 
and  the  colonies,  while  France  was  to  take  Naples  and 
Sicily,  leaving  for  the  emperor  only  Milan.  But  Louis 
XIV.  and  William  of  Orange  had  reckoned  without  their 
host.  The  dying  king,  Carlos,  furious  at  having  this 
disposal  made  of  his  land,  mustered  strength  enough  to 
appear  in  a  council  of  state  and  to  proclaim  Joseph  Fer¬ 
dinand  heir,  not  of  a  part,  but  of  the  whole,  of  his  domains. 

A  fleet  was  ordered  to  Amsterdam  to  escort  the  seven-year- 
old  boy  to  his  new  kingdom.  But  before  either  France  or 
Austria  could  decide,  under  these  changed  circumstances, 


68 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  death¬ 
bed  of 
Carlos  II. 


what  course  to  pursue,  the  young  prince  sickened  and 
died.  It  was  widely  believed,  by  his  father  among  others, 
that  he  had  fallen  a  victim  to  one  of  the  famous  poudres 
de  succession ,  which  Louis  XIY.  was  supposed  to  have 
always  on  hand;  but  these  rumors  of  poisoning  all  rest  on 
too  frail  a  basis.  At  any  rate,  his  death  was  of  great  ad¬ 
vantage  to  Louis ;  by  the  second  partition  treaty,  which 
was  drawn  up  at  his  instigation,  in  March,  1700,  and  with 
regard  to  which  Austria  was  not  consulted,  France  was 
to  have  not  only,  as  before,  Naples  and  Sicily,  but  also 
Sardinia  and  the  duchy  of  Milan. 

Agents  had  meanwhile  been  busy  at  Madrid,  trying  to 
accustom  the  mind  of  the  king  to  the  idea  of  deeding  the 
whole  of  his  possessions  to  a  French  prince.  The  Austrian 
party,  on  the  other  hand,  of  which  the  head  was  the  Spanish 
queen,  Leopold’s  sister-in-law,  sought  to  obtain  a  similar 
declaration  in  favor  of  Archduke  Charles,  the  emperor’s 
younger  son.  The  death-bed  of  the  poor  monarch  was 
made  the  scene  of  bitter  strife  and  contention.  The 
French  party,  headed  by  the  Archbishop  of  Toledo  and  by 
Jesuit  confessors,  finally  managed  to  remove  the  queen 
and  her  allies  from  the  room,  and  half  persuaded,  half  com¬ 
pelled  Carlos,  who  died  almost  immediately  after,  to  sign 
a  will  in  favor  of  Philip  of  Anjou,  grandson  of  Louis  XIY. 

It  remained  to  be  seen  what  attitude  would  be  assumed 
by  the  French  king.  The  latest  partition  treaty,  which 
left  to  Austria  half  of  the  inheritance,  had  been  his  own 
work ;  would  he  adhere  to  it,  or  would  he  be  dazzled  by 
the  prospect  of  the  whole?  In  his  own  mind  there  was 
neither  doubt  nor  hesitation:  the  partition  treaty  had  been 
scarcely  more  than  a  ruse;  he  had  been  fully  initiated  into 
the  plans  of  his  partisans  in  Madrid,  and  was  more  than 
delighted  by  the  latest  turn  of  affairs.  He  declared  that 
the  Pyrenees  had  ceased  to  exist,  and  in  the  palace  of 


THE  SPANISH  SUCCESSION  WAR 


69 


Versailles,  in  the  presence  of  his  whole  court,  proclaimed 
his  grandson  king  of  Spain.  “Only  remember,”  he  said, 
in  his  address  of  congratulation,  “  that  you  are  a  prince  of 
France.”  The  worst  fears  of  England  and  Holland,  not 
to  speak  of  Austria,  were  thus  realized.  Louis  himself 
was  confident  that,  with  Spain  a  friend  instead  of  an 
enemy,  he  could  bid  defiance  to  all  Europe. 

In  the  beginning,  indeed,  the  maritime  powers  showed 
a  dangerous  apathy,  out  of  which  the  Dutch  were  the  first 
to  be  shaken  by  an  attack  of  the  French  on  the  Belgian 
forts,  for  which  Holland,  by  right  of  treaty,  had  provided 
the  garrisons.  Even  then  it  cost  William  of  Orange 
months  of  time  and  infinite  pains  to  bring  the  English 
Parliament  to  a  proper  frame  of  mind.  “  The  blindness 
of  the  people  here  is  incredible,”  he  wrote  to  Heinsius, 
the  grand  pensionary  of  Holland.  His  position  was  not 
easy,  obliged  as  he  was  to  humor  the  Tories  in  order  to 
secure  one  of  the  chief  aims  of  his  life,  the  succession  of 
the  Protestant  house  of  Hanover  to  the  English  throne. 
But  with  great  skill  he  managed  his  affair,  often  conceal¬ 
ing  his  own  ardent  wishes  under  a  cloak  of  assumed  cool¬ 
ness.  In  June,  1701,  that  final  succession  act  was  passed 
which  made  the  Electress  Sophia  heiress  to  the  throne  of 
England;  and,  soon  afterward,  Parliament  signed  an  alli¬ 
ance  with  the  emperor  “  for  the  maintenance  of  the  freedom 
of  Europe,  for  the  welfare  and  peace  of  England,  and 
with  the  end  in  view  of  stemming  the  encroachments  of 
France.”  Leopold  was  promised  a  “  just  and  reasonable 
satisfaction  concerning  his  pretensions  to  the  Spanish 
succession.”  He  was  to  have  the  Netherlands  and  the 
Italian  possessions,  while  England  and  Holland  were  to 
keep  whatever  they  should  conquer  in  the  colonies. 

Thus,  in  September,  1701,  was  formed  what  is  known 
as  the  “Grand  Alliance.”  William  of  Orange,  its  chief 


The 

“  Grand 
Alliance.” 


70 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Renegade 

states. 


promoter,  died  before  it  was  half  a  year  old,  but  it  proved 
the  instrument  that  was  to  overthrow  the  French  Colossus 
and  reestablish  the  equilibrium  of  Europe.  Twelve  years, 
indeed,  of  furious  fighting  were  first  to  pass ;  and,  in  the 
end,  one  of  the  very  partition  arrangements  that  had  been 
discussed  in  the  beginning  was  to  be  peacefully  adopted. 

The  Grand  Alliance  was  joined,  as  a  matter  of  course, 
by  Hanover  and  also  by  Prussia,  whose  newly  created 
king  went  far  beyond  his  stipulated  agreements  with  the 
emperor,  being  eager  for  the  latter’s  good  will  in  the 
matter  of  the  Orange  inheritance,  —  lands  which  he 
claimed  as  heir  to  his  mother,  the  Great  Elector’s  first 
wife.  One  by  one  the  other  German  powers  came  in, 
though,  with  characteristic  tardiness,  the  Diet  of  Ratisbon 
did  not  declare  war  until  the  fighting  had  been  fairly 
under  way  for  nearly  a  year. 

One  striking  exception  was  the  elector  of  Bavaria,  who, 
after  wavering  long  and  weighing  well  the  advantages 
on  both  sides,  went  over  to  the  French.  This  ambitious 
prince,  bereft  of  his  hopes  of  sovereign  influence  by  the 
death  of  his  son,  was  now  deluded  by  Louis  XIV.  in 
every  way.  He  was  to  have  the  Palatinate  if  he  could 
conquer  it,  or  perhaps  the  Netherlands;  a  royal  and,  if 
possible,  the  imperial  crown.  Lured  by  such  prospects 
Max  Emmanuel,  assisted  by  his  brother,  the  Archbishop 
of  Cologne,  made  eager  preparations  to  crush  the  House  of 
Hapsburg.  Another  renegade,  the  Duke  of  Brunswick- 
Wolfenbiittel,  who  with  French  gold  had  raised  an  army 
of  twelve  thousand  men,  was  surprised  and  fallen  upon 
by  his  cousins  of  Celle  and  Hanover,  who  appropriated 
his  mercenaries  and  made  them  fight  on  their  own  side. 

Even  after  signing  the  alliance,  and  after  the  Austrian 
armies  had  been  long  in  the  field,  England  was  slow  about 
opening  hostilities,  hoping  still  to  accomplish  something 


THE  SPANISH  SUCCESSION  WAR 


71 


by  further  negotiations.  But  when,  oh  the  death  of 
James  II.,  Louis  XIV.  ostentatiously  treated  James’s 
son  with  royal  honors  and  addressed  him  as  James  III., 
all  the  reluctance  of  the  English  people  to  the  war  sud¬ 
denly  melted  away.  In  the  public  squares  of  London  a 
herald,  to  the  sound  of  trumpets,  formally  summoned  the 
king  of  France  to  mortal  combat  on  the  ground  of  “pre¬ 
suming  to  support  the  so-called  Prince  of  Wales  as  king 
of  England.”  Parliament  granted  forty  thousand  marines 
and  an  equal  number  of  land  soldiers.  The  chief  com¬ 
mand  was  intrusted  to  Churchill,  Duke  of  Marlborough, 
who,  as  the  “handsomest  man  in  the  world,”  was  all- 
powerful  at  court;  while  his  wife,  too,  formerly  plain 
Sarah  Jennings,  had  gained  a  great  influence  over  Queen 
Anne.  Not  that  a  better  choice  could  at  that  time  have 
been  made ;  no  one  had  worked  harder  than  Marlborough 
in  bringing  about  the  Grand  Alliance,  no  one  possessed  a 
greater  share  of  coolness,  of  daring,  of  all  the  qualities, 
in  fact,  that  go  to  make  up  a  perfect  field  commander. 

Meanwhile,  the  Austrians  had  been  most  fortunate  in 
finding  a  man  of  the  same  stamp,  and  one  who  proved 
able,  eventually,  to  send  new  blood  coursing  through  the 
flabby  veins  of  the  bodies  politic  and  military.  When  the 
war  was  first  decided  upon,  early  in  1701,  there  was  no 
doubt  in  any  one’s  mind  but  that  Prince  Eugene  of  Savoy, 
the  victor  of  Zenta,  must  be  despatched  to  the  scene  of  the 
first  fighting.  He,  too,  had  spoken  decisive  words  in  favor 
of  the  war;  and  his  initial  march  from  the  Tyrol  to  Italy 
showed  the  French  that  they  had  to  deal  with  a  genius  of 
the  very  first  order.  One  of  Louis  XIV.’s  first  cares  had 
been  to  seize  Milan,  Mantua,  and  other  places  in  Lom¬ 
bardy  ;  and  his  general,  Catinat,  who  felt  assured  of  the 
route  that  Eugene  intended  to  take,  had  posted  his  whole 
army  near  Monte  Baldo,  between  the  Lago  di  Garda  and 


The  Duke 
of  Marl¬ 
borough 
placed  in 
command. 


Prince 
Eugene  of 
Savoy  in 
Italy. 


72 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


the  right  bank  of  the  Adige.  The  Austrian  general,  in 
order  to  keep  up  the  illusion,  sent  workmen  to  level  the 
main  road,  and  then,  swiftly  and  secretly,  led  his  army 
from  Roveredo  over  paths  that  were  considered  so  impas¬ 
sable  that  not  even  a  picket  had  been  stationed  to  guard 
them.  He  reached  the  Lombard  plains  without  having  to 
fire  a  shot,  while  Catinat,  not  recognizing  his  own  numeri¬ 
cal  superiority,  remained  on  the  defensive  without  daring 
to  risk  an  engagement.  The  first  skirmish  came  at  Carpi, 
where  the  French,  although  their  losses  amounted  to  only 
350  men,  became  so  disheartened  that  Catinat  decided  to 
venture  upon  no  more  actions,  and  wrote  to  Louis  XIV., 
“  We  are  compelled,  sire,  to  await  what  steps  the  enemy 
shall  decide  to  take.”  This,  with  an  army  of  forty  thou¬ 
sand,  as  opposed  to  twenty-seven  thousand  of  the  Austrians ! 
The  latter  were  able,  in  sight  of  the  French,  to  cross  the 
river  Mincio  without  molestation.  Catinat  was  then  de¬ 
prived  of  his  command  and  replaced  by  Marshal  Villeroi. 

To  follow  in  detail  Eugene’s  campaigns  in  Italy  would 
lead  us  too  far.  Villeroy  was  defeated  at  Chiari  and 
became  an  imitator  of  Catinat’s  timid  policy;  he  was  cap¬ 
tured  at  Cremona,  and  the  French  at  home  could  only 
rejoice  that  they  were  well  rid  of  him.  He  was  succeeded 
by  Vend6me,  “a  wild,  vicious  genius  in  his  personal 
habits,  but  also  a  genius  in  commanding;  full  of  force, 
fire,  and  invention,  and  the  very  god  of  the  French 
army.”1  He  tried  a  bold  attack  on  Eugene  at  Luzzara, 
but  the  latter  held  the  field,  although  Vendome’s  forces 
outnumbered  his  own  as  three  to  one. 

But  the  Austrian  army  was  greatly  weakened,  and  re¬ 
enforcements  were  slow  in  coming.  Eugene  complained 
bitterly  that  in  four  months  he  had  received  but  one 
answer  to  his  numerous  despairing  messages.  Conclud- 


1  Erdnaannsdorfer,  IT.  190. 


THE  SPANISH  SUCCESSION  WAR 


73 


ing  that  the  most  pressing  need  was  a  reorganization  of 
the  home  war  department,  he  gave  his  command  to  Guido 
Starhemberg,  and  hastened  to  Vienna,  where,  after  months 
of  labor,  he  revolutionized  the  military  and  financial  man¬ 
agement,  himself  becoming  president  of  the  new  war 
council.  Starhemberg  was  for  a  while  in  great  straits, 
and  considered  himself  deserted,  but  Vendchne  gave  him 
breathing  space  by  turning  off  toward  the  Tyrol,  for  the  pur¬ 
pose  of  effecting  a  union  with  Max  Emmanuel  of  Bavaria. 

Meanwhile,  on  the  other  scenes  of  war,  events  had  Bavarian 
turned  out  more  in  accordance  with  the  usual  course  of  victories. 
Austrian  and  imperial  campaigns.  The  chief  command 
on  the  Rhine  had  been  intrusted  to  the  Margrave  of 
Baden,  once  a  capable  commander  and  one  who  had  done 
good  service  against  the  Turks,  but  now  grown  old  and 
timid,  and  a  very  drag  on  the  wheels  of  Eugene’s  policy. 

During  two  years,  the  siege  and  capture  of  Landau,  which 
was  eventually  retaken,  was  almost  his  only  successful 
achievement.  The  same  inactivity  prevailed  in  the  Neth¬ 
erlands,  where  Marlborough  was  hampered  and  constantly 
irritated  by  the  senilities  of  the  Dutch  war  council.  In 
August,  1702,  a  Dutch-English  fleet  set  out  to  take  Cadiz, 
but  contented  itself  with  the  capture  of  a  few  Spanish 
prizes.  An  army  of  mixed  Prussian,  imperial,  and  Pala¬ 
tine  troops  did,  in  course  of  time,  succeed  in  driving  the 
Archbishop  of  Cologne  from  all  his  domains.  The  greatest 
activity  in  these  first  years  of  the  war  was  shown  by  the 
elector  of  Bavaria.  Early  in  1703  he  marched  on  Ratisbon 
and  rendered  the  members  of  the  Diet  virtually  prisoners, 
refusing  them  pass  and  safe-conduct.  Then  he  turned 
against  the  Tyrol,  took  Kufstein,  and  made  a  pompous  tri¬ 
umphal  entry  into  Innsbruck,  his  head  already  full  of  plans 
for  rounding  off  Bavaria  with  this  splendid  mountain  prov¬ 
ince.  He  was  preparing  to  cross  the  Brenner  and  join  V en- 


74 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  battle 
of  Blen¬ 
heim. 


dbme,  in  Italy,  when  a  ferocious  uprising  of  the  Tyrolese 
peasants  spoiled  his  plan  of  campaign.  Driven  back  to  Mu¬ 
nich,  he  was  allowed,  by  the  lethargic  Margrave  of  Baden,  to 
unite  with  the  French  marshal,  Villars,  with  whose  aid  he 
defeated  the  Austrian  general,  Styrum,  between  Schwen- 
ningen  and  Hochstadt.  Villars  spoke  in  his  report  of  this 
modest  engagement  as  “the  grandest  victory  of  which 
it  is  possible  to  conceive,”  but  soon  quarrelled  with  Max 
Emmanuel  and  was  replaced  by  Marshal  Marsin.  The 
latter  assisted  in  the  capture  of  Augsburg,  which  was 
forced  to  pay  a  high  contribution,  to  throw  down  its  walls 
and  towers,  and  to  furnish  winter  quarters.  Maximilian 
was  greeted  on  his  entry  as  “  Augustus,  and  soon  to  be 
Caesar”;  while  a  medal  struck  in  these  days  designated 
him  already  as  “King  of  Bohemia.”  The  days  of  the 
Hapsburg  rule  seemed  numbered;  early  in  1704  Passau 
was  taken,  and  threatening  demonstrations  were  made 
before  Linz. 

But  a  frightful  Nemesis  was  pursuing  the  renegade 
Bavarian.  The  cause  of  the  allies  had  been  strength¬ 
ened,  in  1703,  by  the  accession  of  Savoy,  and  also  of 
Portugal.  The  young  Archduke  Charles,  Leopold’s  sec¬ 
ond  son,  was  despatched  to  Lisbon,  where  he  took  the  title 
of  King  Charles  III.,  and,  with  Portuguese,  English,  and 
Dutch  aid,  prepared  to  march  to  Madrid  and  make  good 
his  claim  to  the  Spanish  throne.  And  in  the  meantime 
the  Margrave  of  Baden  had  shown  himself  so  supremely 
incapable  in  the  operations  before  Linz,  that  even  the  old 
emperor  Leopold  was  brought  to  ask  him  to  resign  the 
chief  command,  and  appointed  Eugene  in  his  place.  Last, 
but  not  least,  Marlborough  determined  to  quit  the  fields 
where  he  was  reaping  so  little  glory,  and  obtained  per¬ 
mission  to  hasten  to  the  German  seat  of  war;  he  was 
hampered,  indeed,  by  having  to  show  consideration  for 


THE  SPANISH  SUCCESSION  WAR 


75 


the  Margrave  of  Baden,  who  had  accepted  a  lower  com¬ 
mand  and  who  was  to  lead  Marlborough’s  own  army  on 
alternate  days.  His  tiresome  objections  to  war  d  la  Hus- 
sara  drove  both  the  English  general  and  Prince  Eugene, 
who  now  came  up,  fairly  to  desperation,  and  both  were 
glad  enough  to  give  him  twenty  thousand  men,  and  wish 
him  Godspeed  when  he  marched  off  to  besiege  Ingolstadt. 

The  union  of  Eugene  and  Marlborough  brought  about 
some  of  the  most  brilliant  military  achievements  that  are 
recorded  in  all  history.  Here,  in  the  vicinity  of  the 
Bavarian  frontier,  they  won  together  the  battle  of  Blen¬ 
heim,  —  Hochstadt,  the  Germans  called  it,  —  the  greatest 
since  the  war  began,  and  one  in  which  clever  reckoning 
and  well-considered  tactics  played  a  more  important  part 
than  in  any  battle  since  classic  times.  It  was  the  begin¬ 
ning  of  a  form  of  warfare  that  was  brought  to  perfection 
by  Moltke  in  our  own  day. 

In  the  midst  of  the  battle  Marlborough  performed  the 
remarkable  manoeuvre  of  re-forming  his  troops  under  fire, 
and  changing  the  brunt  of  attack  from  the  village  of  Blen¬ 
heim,  about  which  the  French  infantry  was  massed,  to  a 
point  farther  to  the  west,  where  he  suddenly  perceived 
that  their  cavalry  was  weak.  The  operation  succeeded 
completely,  the  cavalry  was  put  to  flight,  the  infantry 
surrounded  and  forced  to  surrender.  Marshal  Tallard  was 
taken  captive,  together  with  the  cash-box,  containing  the 
pay  for  his  troops ;  twenty-eight  thousand  men  were  killed, 
wounded,  or  taken  prisoner;  included  in  the  booty  were 
fifty-four  hundred  provision  wagons  and  thirty-four  coaches 
filled  with  French  courtesans. 

Among  the  results  of  Hochstadt  were  the  occupation  of  Occupation 
the  whole  of  Bavaria,  the  flight  of  Max  Emmanuel,  the  of  Bavaria, 
arrest  of  his  young  sons,  —  who  were  kept  under  Austrian 
tutelage  for  the  next  ten  years,  —  and,  finally,  the  raising 


76 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Turin  and 
Ramillies. 


of  Marlborough  to  the  rank  of  a  prince  of  the  empire,  with 
the  little  Bavarian  principality  of  Mindelheim.  A  rebel¬ 
lion  against  the  Austrian  rule,  which  took  place  somewhat 
later,  was  successfully  put  clown.  In  the  presence  of  the  em¬ 
peror,  at  Vienna,  Bavaria’s  old  charters  were  torn  through 
the  middle  and  thrown  on  the  ground,  the  elector  and  his 
brother  were  put  to  the  ban,  while  the  arch-chancellor  of 
the  empire  publicly  proclaimed  that  Max  Emmanuel’s 
“miserable  body”  was  at  the  mercy  of  every  one  to  hurt 
or  to  harm  with  impunity. 

The  battle  of  Blenheim  was  the  only  great  engagement 
that  took  place  on  German  soil  during  the  whole  of  the 
succession  war.  In  the  period  that  followed,  the  Margrave 
of  Baden  was  left  to  defend  the  Rhine,  while  Eugene 
resumed  his  command  in  Italy,  and  Marlborough,  with 
some  unwillingness,  returned  to  Belgium.  Archduke 
Charles,  or,  as  he  now  called  himself,  King  Charles  III., 
succeeded  in  entering  Madrid;  but  his  position  was  preca¬ 
rious,  and  could  only  be  maintained  with  the  help  of  his 
army. 

Eugene,  at  first,  was  unfortunate  in  Italy,  although  sup¬ 
ported  by  his  cousin,  the  Duke  of  Savoy.  He  lost  the 
field  of  Cassano,  and  was  so  discouraged  that  he  thought 
of  resigning  his  command.  But,  in  1706,  supplied  with 
funds  and  reenforcements,  he  carried  out  a  series  of  most 
brilliant  movements  against  Duke  Philip  of  Orleans, —  son 
of  “Lise  Lotta,”  —  and  Marshal  Marsin,  neither  of  whom 
possessed  the  tete  de  fer  which  Vendome  had  declared  to 
be  absolutely  needed  in  Italy.  The  battle  of  Turin,  fought 
in  September,  1706,  was  another  of  the  giant  encounters 
of  this  war.  For  a  time  the  chances  of  the  day  swayed 
backward  and  forward;  but  at  last  Marsin  was  fatally 
wounded,  and  the  Duke  of  Orleans  so  seriously  injured 
that  he  had  to  leave  the  field.  Within  two  hours  the 


THE  SPANISH  SUCCESSION  WAR 


77 


French  were  in  wild  flight,  and  before  evening  Eugene 
and  Victor  Amadeus  held  a  triumphal  entry  into  the 
town  of  Turin.  This  battle  determined  the  fate  of  north¬ 
ern  Italy,  and  within  six  months  the  enemy  had  agreed 
to  quit  the  land. 

No  less  brilliant  had  been  the  fortunes  of  Marlborough 
in  Belgium,  where  the  battle  of  Ramillies,  fought  against 
Marshal  Villeroi  and  Max  Emmanuel,  saved  the  Nether¬ 
lands  for  Austria,  and  took  away  from  the  Bavarian  his  last 
hope  of  conquering  a  compensation  for  his  lost  electorate. 

Less  successful  was  an  expedition,  undertaken  in  the  in¬ 
terests  of  the  English  and  at  Marlborough’s  earnest  wish, 
against  the  Mediterranean  port  of  Toulon.  In  spite  of 
the  assistance  of  Eugene  the  attempt  failed,  and  the  allies 
retired  to  Italy  with  a  loss  of  ten  thousand  men. 

Meanwhile  the  prospects  were  anything  but  bright  for  Joseph 
the  emperor,  Joseph  I.,  who  had  succeeded  his  father, 
Leopold,  in  1705,  and  who  was  personally  one  of  the 
best  and  strongest  of  the  Hapsburgs.  Just  as  he  lacked 
the  protruding  lip  of  his  ancestors,  so  was  his  character 
free  from  the  usual  mixture  of  indecision  and  bigotry.  In 
spite  of  the  victories  on  distant  fields,  Joseph’s  position 
was  highly  precarious.  Almost  simultaneously  with  the 
Spanish  Succession  War  there  had  broken  out  a  fierce  rebel¬ 
lion  in  Hungary;  and,  in  the  North,  the  great  struggle  had 
begun  of  Denmark,  Russia,  and  Poland  against  Sweden. 

From  the  year  1703  on,  Rakoczy  had  been  the  soul  of  the 
Hungarian  revolt,  and  had  been  hand  in  glove  with  Louis 
XIV.,  who  paid  him  enormous  subsidies.  A  plan  was  on 
foot  for  giving  the  crown  of  St.  Stephen  to  Max  Emmanuel 
of  Bavaria. 

The  northern  war  had  had  the  effect  of  withdrawing 
Augustus  the  Strong,  the  Saxon  elector  and  Polish  king, 
from  the  cause  of  the  emperor.  The  fiery  Charles  XII.  of 


78 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Charles 
XII.  of 
Sweden  in 
Silesia. 


Sweden  had  proved  a  match  for  all  his  enemies, — even,  as 
yet,  for  Peter  the  Great.  In  1702  he  had  conquered  War¬ 
saw,  and  two  years  later  had  deposed  Augustus  the  Strong 
and  put  Stanislaus  Lescinsky  on  the  Polish  throne.  In 
1706,  he  determined  to  invade  Saxony  and  utterly  humili¬ 
ate  his  old  rival.  So  successfully  did  he  carry  out  his  plan 
that  in  the  same  year  Augustus  was  forced  to  sign  the  Peace 
of  Alt-Ranstadt;  by  which  he  abdicated  his  Polish  claims, 
promised  never  to  interfere  with  the  Protestantism  of  his 
Saxon  subjects,  and  agreed  to  give  winter  quarters  to  the 
Swedes,  who  then  occupied  his  cities  of  W  ittenberg  and 
Leipzig.  Here  was  a  case  where  the  emperor,  had  not  his 
every  nerve  been  strained  to  carry  on  the  French  war,  was 
bound  to  intervene.  A  Swedish  army  in  winter  quarters 
on  German  ground,  and  a  king  who  came  forward  with  as 
lordly  demands  as  though  he  had  been  Gustavus  Adolphus 
in  person !  In  order  to  reach  Saxony,  Charles  XII.  had 
passed  through  Silesia  without  so  much  as  asking  leave. 
He  found  there  that  Austria  had  been  oppressing  her 
Protestant  subjects,  and  he  now  insisted  on  a  number 
of  reforms.  For  one  whole  year  he  remained  in  Saxony, 
keeping  Joseph  on  tenter-hooks,  lest  he,  Charles,  should 
hearken  to  the  alluring  voice  of  Louis  XIV.,  whose  mar¬ 
shal,  Villars,  sought  Charles  out  and  is  said  to  have 
proposed  a  common  march  on  Vienna.  But  the  Duke  of 
Marlborough  proved  of  use  at  this  juncture,  not  only  as  a 
general,  but  also  as  a  diplomat.  He  visited  Charles  XII.  at 
Alt-Ranstadt,  and  flattered  him  by  the  prospect  of  having 
Sweden  chosen  as  intermediary  in  the  peace  negotiations 
that  were  expected  shortly  to  take  place.  On  his  bond, 
indeed,  Charles  XII.  insisted ;  and  the  emperor  was  forced, 
in  the  face  of  an  ultimatum,  to  sign  a  convention  by 
which  he  conceded  to  the  Silesian  Protestants  a  number  of 
religious  reforms,  which,  strangely  enough,  proved  perma- 


THE  SPANISH  SUCCESSION  WAR 


79 


nent,  —  more  so  than  the  glory  of  the  Swedish  king,  who, 
soon  afterward,  in  the  battle  of  Pultava  (1709),  received  a 
severe  punishment  at  the  hands  of  Peter  the  Great. 

Joseph  I.  must  indeed  have  possessed  considerable 
bravery  not  to  despair  utterly  among  the  dangers  and 
difficulties  that  beset  him  at  every  conceivable  point. 
Louis  of  Baden,  partly  through  his  own  failure  to  come 
to  any  rational  agreement  with  Marlborough,  had  been 
left,  in  1706,  with  insufficient  forces  on  the  Upper  Rhine. 
He  had  been  driven  out  of  Alsace  and  across  the  river ; 
and  in  the  following  year,  while  the  stubborn  old  general 
lay  dying  at  Rastadt,  the  whole  Swabian  circle  was  rav¬ 
aged  by  the  French.  In  the  meantime  an  entirely  new 
and  unexpected  enemy  had  arisen  in  Italy.  Once  more 
the  world  saw  the  spectacle  of  a  Pope  and  an  emperor  in 
arms  against  each  other;  once  more  the  ban  was  hurled 
against  the  godless  invaders  of  church  lands,  while,  in  the 
Square  of  St.  Peter’s,  there  floated  a  banner  with  the  device, 
Domine  defende  causam  tuam.  A  coolness  had  existed 
between  Joseph  and  Clement,  owing  to  the  latter’s  out¬ 
spoken  French  sympathies  and  to  the  emperor’s  claim  of 
the  right  to  fill  one  vacant  place  in  each  German  cathe¬ 
dral  chapter.  But  when,  in  1707,  Joseph  conceived  the 
idea  of  installing  Charles  III.  on  the  throne  of  Naples,  and 
quartered  troops  in  the  old  imperial  fiefs  of  Parma,  Pia¬ 
cenza,  Ferrara,  and  Commachio,  matters  came  to  a  climax. 
Clement  raised  an  army  and  begged  for  assistance  from 
France ;  while  his  adversary  restored  the  fortifications  of 
Commachio,  and  is  said  to  have  placed  an  inscription  over 
one  of  the  gates,  “To  Joseph  the  emperor,  who  seeks  to 
regain  the  ancient  rights  over  Italy.”  At  Joseph’s  request, 
the  king  of  Prussia,  mindful  of  the  Pope’s  refusal  to 
recognize  him,  sent  reenforcements,  at  the  same  time 
ordering  his  general  to  secure  some  of  the  larger  cannon, 


✓ 


A  new 
quarrel 
between 
Pope  and 
emperor. 


80 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


—  with  the  papal  arms  if  possible,  — for  the  new  Zeughaus 
in  Berlin.  There  resulted  the  occupation  of  more  papal 
territory;  a  threat  of  sending  General  Daun,  at  the  head 
of  his  troops,  against  Rome  itself;  and,  finally,  an  ulti¬ 
matum  which  brought  Clement  to  his  knees  one  hour 
before  midnight  on  the  day  on  which  the  term  expired. 
The  Pope  agreed  to  disband  his  army,  and  to  recognize 
Charles  III.  as  king  of  Naples. 

Lille  and  As  for  Eugene  and  Marlborough,  the  best  field  for  their 

Oudenarde.  united  efforts  now  seemed  to  lie  in  Belgium.  It  is  true 
they  had  formed  a  different  plan  of  campaign  with  the 
elector  of  Hanover,  who  had  taken  the  Margrave  of  Baden’s 
place  on  the  Rhine ;  and  so  disgusted  was  the  future  king 
of  England  with  their  change  of  mind,  that  he  threw  down 
his  command.  But  the  two  great  generals,  as  usual,  were 
in  the  right;  the  French  had  concentrated  all  their  forces 
in  Flanders,  and  were  able,  in  1708,  to  take  the  towns  of 
Bruges  and  Ghent.  But  the  allies  in  the  same  year  gained 
the  victory  of  Oudenarde,  — a  victory  so  signal  that  Marl¬ 
borough  for  a  time  could  think  of  marching  direct  upon 
Paris.  Other  counsels  prevailed,  indeed,  and  it  was  de¬ 
termined  instead  to  lay  siege  to  Lille,  which,  since  its  con¬ 
quest  by  Louis  XIV.,  in  1668,  had  been  turned  into  the 
strongest  fortress  in  northern  France.  In  vain  VendOme 
and  the  Duke  of  Burgundy  sought  to  bring  help  to  the 
heroic  Marshal  Boufflers,  who  defended  the  town  to  the 
last  moment,  and  who,  even  after  the  outer  works  were 
lost,  retired  to  the  citadel.  From  here,  too,  he  was  at  last 
driven;  while,  at  the  same  time,  Max  Emmanuel  of  Ba¬ 
varia,  who  had  made  a  dash  for  Brussels,  was  forced  back, 
and  Belgium  thus  cleansed  of  the  French.  Vendome  fell 
into  disgrace,  and  the  new  armee  de  Flandres  was  given  to 
Villars;  while  so  desperate  was  the  general  situation  — 
the  prospect  of  a  famine  in  the  following  summer  having 


THE  SPANISH  SUCCESSION  WAR 


81 


also  to  be  faced  —  that  Louis  XIV.  sued  for  peace,  and  a 
conference  of  all  the  powers  concerned  was  called  together 
at  the  Hague.  Here  the  proposals,  not  unnaturally,  were 
humiliating  enough  for  France:  England  demanded  the 
recognition  of  the  Hanoverian  dynasty,  and  the  razing  of 
the  fortress  of  Dunkirk;  Holland,  the  right  to  garrison  a 
belt  of  fortresses  in  Belgium ;  Austria,  the  whole  of  the 
Spanish  inheritance;  the  empire  was  to  recover  its  old 
boundaries,  including  not  only  Alsace  with  Strassburg, 
but  also  Metz,  Toul,  and  Verdun. 

Almost  all  of  these  conditions  Louis  XIV.  was  willing  Malplaquet. 
to  accept;  he  agreed  to  renounce  the  Spanish  inheritance 
and  even  to  give  up  Strassburg,  but  when,  in  the  pride  of 
victory,  the  allies  insisted  that,  in  case  Philip  of  Anjou 
and  the  people  of  Spain  should  offer  opposition,  he  should 
assist  in  driving  out  his  own  grandson,  his  cup  of  wrath 
flowed  over.  Neither  now,  nor  in  the  following  year,  in 
the  conferences  at  Gertruydenberg,  would  he  treat  on  such 
a  basis.  “  The  French  would  be  no  longer  French,”  wrote 
Madame  de  Maintenon,  “  if  they  accepted  an  insult  like 
this;”  while  “Lise  Lotta  ”  declared  that  the  allies  had 
made  “barbaric  propositions.”  The  conference  was  broken 
up  and  the  war  renewed. 

The  bloodiest  of  all  the  battles  of  this  long  struggle,  and 
the  one  which,  in  point  of  the  numbers  participating,  out¬ 
ranks  any  action  of  the  eighteenth  century,  still  remained 
to  be  fought.  Louis  XIV.  roused  himself  to  his  last  and 
most  desperate  effort,  while  the  French  people  stood  by  him 
to  a  man,  and  many  sold  the  silver  from  their  table  to  fur¬ 
nish  him  with  funds.  At  Malplaquet,  fought  in  Septem¬ 
ber,  1709,  ninety  thousand  Frenchmen,  under  Villars,  stood 
over  against  one  hundred  thousand  of  the  allies,  com¬ 
manded  by  Eugene  and  Marlborough.  With  the  latter 
were  Frederick  William,  the  crown  prince  of  Prussia, 


VOL.  II —  G 


82 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Death  of 
Joseph. 


Schwerin  the  future  victor  of  Mollwitz,  and  Maurice,  the 
later  MarSchal  de  Saxe . 

The  battle  raged  from  early  morning  to  late  evening, 
with  the  final  result  that  the  allies  maintained  the  field, 
but  lost  twice  as  many  in  dead  and  wounded  as  their  con¬ 
quered  opponents.  The  French  were  not  so  wholly  to 
blame  for  ascribing  the  victory  to  themselves :  it  was  in 
these  days  that  in  all  the  streets  of  Paris  one  could  hear 
the  mocking  song,  “Marlborough  s’en  va-t’en  guerre!” 
At  all  events,  Malplaquet  practically  finished  the  war. 
France  was  on  the  verge  of  bankruptcy,  and,  although 
numerous  small  engagements  still  took  place,  they  were 
only  the  running  commentary,  as  it  were,  to  the  long 
negotiations  for  peace. 

That  these  negotiations  lasted  as  long  as  they  did  was 
largely  the  fault  of  Marlborough.  The  Whig  party  lived 
by  war,  and  to  it  the  great  general  was  not  above  catering. 
But  now  a  new  event  occurred,  which  changed  the  aspect 
of  affairs  and  acted  like  an  explosive  in  sundering  the 
Austrian  and  English  interests.  In  the  tide  of  Louis 
XIV. ’s  fortunes,  and  not  through  any  victories  of  his 
own,  there  came  a  wonderful  rise. 

In  April,  1711,  the  young  Emperor  Joseph  fell  sick 
with  the  small-pox  and  died.  The  next  of  kin,  and  the  one 
to  whom  the  throne  of  the  empire  would  be  likely  to  fall, 
was  none  other  than  that  Charles  III.  who  was  struggling 
so  hard  for  the  crowns  of  Spain  and  Italy.  But  could  Eng¬ 
land  and  Holland  now,  any  more  than  in  the  beginning, 
submit  to  the  union  of  all  these  territories  in  one  hand? 
The  wheel  had  swung  round  to  where  it  had  stood  eleven 
years  before.  In  London,  at  the  Hague,  and  in  Berlin, 
there  was  but  one  thought,  that  a  new  Charles  V.  could 
never  be  tolerated;  far  better  that  France  should  enjoy  a 
part  of  the  Spanish  inheritance. 


THE  SPANISH  SUCCESSION  WAR 


83 


Altogether,  in  England,  a  strong  contrary  wind  was  England 
blowing.  For  the  first  time  in  many  years  the  Tory  party  deserts  her 
gained  the  ascendency.  Marlborough  soon  found  that  his  allies* 
influence  was  gone ;  his  enemies  even  dared  to  accuse  him 
of  taking  a  percentage  from  the  Jews  who  supplied  bread 
for  his  army,  and  of  appropriating  funds  that  were  in¬ 
tended  for  the  foreign  troops.  Queen  Anne  dismissed  the 
Duchess  of  Marlborough  from  her  presence,  while,  in  the 
country  at  large,  all  the  landowners  clamored  for  peace  at 
any  price.  Thus  was  England  hurried  into  one  of  the  most 
disgraceful  acts  in  her  history.  Without  a  word  to  the 
allies,  at  whose  side  she  had  fought  for  so  many  years,  she 
entered  into  private  negotiations  with  France,  and  assured 
Spain  to  Philip  of  Anjou.  Austria  was  left  completely 
in  the  lurch;  her  minister,  Count  Gallas,  was  snubbed 
and  boycotted  in  London,  ostensibly  on  personal  grounds. 

No  other  than  Prince  Eugene,  whom  the  English  had 
hitherto  fairly  idolized,  was  sent  to  take  his  place.  He 
arrived  only  to  learn  that  Marlborough  had  been  driven 
from  all  his  offices,  and  his  command  in  the  Netherlands 
given  to  the  Duke  of  Ormond.  After  a  stay  of  two 
months,  Eugene  was  obliged  to  confess  that  for  once  he 
had  lost  a  campaign.  The  command  to  the  English  army, 
to  desist  from  fighting,  reached  it  on  the  eve  of  an  expected 
engagement  on  the  river  Scheldt,  which  the  allies  felt  sure 
of  winning.  England’s  own  soldiers  all  but  mutinied 
when  told  to  withdraw,  and  refused  the  usual  cheer  to 
their  officers  as  they  were  marched  off  to  Dunkirk.  A 
number  deserted  on  the  way.  Although  fifty  thousand 
Germans,  who  had  been  in  the  English  pay,  scorned  the 
new  orders  and  joined  Eugene,  the  general  discourage¬ 
ment  was  so  great  that  Villars  easily  gained  a  succession 
of  small  victories. 

The  final  arrangement  between  England,  Holland,  and 


84 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  Peace 
of  Utrecht. 


Austria 
continues 
the  war. 


France  was  completed  at  Utrecht,  in  1713.  Portugal, 
Savoy,  and  Prussia  joined  in  signing  the  treaty  of  peace. 
Philip  of  Anjou  was  acknowledged  as  king  of  Spain,  but 
was  forced  to  renounce  any  rights  of  eventual  succession 
to  the  French  throne;  while  the  younger  Bourbons  signed 
a  similar  agreement  with  regard  to  Spain.  England  her¬ 
self  secured  the  invaluable  Mediterranean  stations  of  Port 
Mahon  and  Gibraltar;  and  in  the  New  World — at  the  cost 
of  France  —  the  island  of  Newfoundland  and  Nova  Scotia, 
as  well  as  Hudson’s  Bay  Territory.  Max  Emmanuel  of 
Bavaria  and  his  brother  were  reinstated  in  all  their  rights 
and  possessions,  even  Marlborough’s  little  principality  of 
Mindelheim  being  suppressed  without  equivalent.  On 
the  part  of  Max  Emmanuel  a  struggle  was  made,  in  addi¬ 
tion,  for  the  Spanish  Netherlands ;  but  this  neither  England 
nor  Holland  would  allow.  It  was  much  more  agreeable 
to  them  that  the  Bavarian  elector  should  have  Sardinia, 
which  they  were  willing  to  slice  off  from  the  share  they 
had  intended  to  allot  to  Austria.  To  Victor  Amadeus 
was  given  Sicily;  to  Portugal  lands  on  the  Amazon  River; 
and  to  Prussia,  part  of  Guelders,  with  the  recognition  of 
her  right  to  Neuchatel,  which  had  belonged  to  the  Orange 
inheritance. 

Charles  VI.,  as  the  new  emperor  called  himself,  had 
sent  an  envoy  to  Utrecht,  but  received  such  treatment  at 
the  hands  of  Louis  XIV.  that  he  refused  to  sign  the  peace. 
The  French  king  sent  demands,  in  the  form  of  an  ultima¬ 
tum,  which,  as  Charles  said  himself,  were  such  as  should 
only  have  been  presented  to  a  subjugated  enemy.  He  was 
not  to  be  acknowledged  as  emperor  until  he  should  have 
reinstated  the  two  Wittelsbachs ;  and  a  whole  list  of  charges 
and  damages  on  their  account  was  to  be  paid  by  him.  He 
was  to  give  a  pledge  never  to  attempt  to  acquire  more  land 
in  Italy  than  the  congress  at  Utrecht  should  have  assigned. 


i 


THE  SPANISH  SUCCESSION  WAR 


85 


In  spite  of  his  complete  isolation  and  of  the  general 
hopelessness  of  his  cause,  Charles  determined  to  continue 
the  war.  He  would  rather,  he  said  to  Lord  Peterborough, 
—  whom  in  his  excitement  he  seized  by  the  coat-button,  — 
he  would  rather  risk  and  lose  all,  than  have  laws  dictated 
to  him  in  this  fashion.  The  Diet  of  Ratisbon  also  was  in 
favor  of  resistance,  and  thanked  the  emperor  for  refusing 
such  “  despicable  and  unworthy  ”  proposals  of  peace,  the 
acceptance  of  which  would  have  led  to  inevitable  slavery. 

In  the  campaign  that  followed,  the  French,  as  may  be 
imagined,  were  uniformly  successful.  For  the  fourth  time  in 
this  war,  Landau  underwent  a  siege  and  was  captured,  and 
a  like  fate  befell  Freiburg.  But  Louis  XI Y.,  whose  life 
and  strength  were  now  ebbing  away,  was  heartily  anxious 
for  peace,  and  was  willing,  eventually,  to  make  further 
concessions  than  at  Utrecht.  It  was  finally  agreed  that 
the  two  commanders-in-chief,  Eugene  and  Villars,  should 
come  together  at  Rastadt  and  discuss  the  question  of  pre¬ 
liminaries.  The  course  of  these  negotiations  was  by  no 
means  smooth.  For  three  months  the  two  generals,  who 
held  their  meetings  in  the  splendid  castle  built  by  the 
Margrave  of  Baden,  wrangled  as  to  terms.  Eugene  far 
outmatched  his  opponent  in  the  field  of  diplomacy,  and  at 
last,  by  laying  down  an  ultimatum  and  ostentatiously  pre¬ 
paring  for  further  hostilities,  gained  for  Austria  more 
than  she  could  have  hoped.  Her  chief  gains  were  the 
Netherlands  and,  practically,  all  that  Spain  had  possessed 
in  Italy,  —  including  Sardinia,  which  was  taken  away  from 
Max  Emmanuel.  Three  years  later  Austria  exchanged 
this  latter  island  with  the  House  of  Savoy  for  Sicily. 

It  remained  for  the  empire,  as  a  whole,  to  make  its 
peace  with  France.  For  this  purpose  plenipotentiaries  met 
at  Baden,  and,  with  characteristic  slowness,  spent  three 
whole  months  in  drawing  up  a  document  which,  when  it 


The  treaties 
of  Rastadt 
and  Baden. 


86 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


was  finished,  differed  scarcely  in  a  single  word  from  the 
Peace  of  Rastadt.  Altogether,  the  part  played  by  the 
empire  had  been  one  of  sacrifice  and  self-effacement.  Two 
questions  that  were  vital  to  her  were  scarcely  even  touched 
upon  at  Baden:  the  rectification  of  the  western  boundary, 
and  the  repeal  of  the  “Ryswick  clause.”  Germany  came 
forth  from  the  war  exactly  as  she  had  gone  into  it,  except 
that  she  was  poorer  in  men  and  money. 

As  for  France,  though  defeated  in  every  great  battle, 
she  stood  there  strong  and  aggressive  as  ever,  having 
placed  a  Bourbon  on  the  throne  of  Spain  and  compelled 
the  emperor  to  reinstate,  without  punishment,  his  rebel 
vassals.  Her  various  attempts,  however,  to  cast  a  yoke 
upon  Germany  had  proved  a  failure,  and  had  to  be 
postponed  for  nearly  a  century. 


CHAPTER  III 


THE  FATHER  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


Literature  :  In  addition  to  the  general  works  mentioned  under  Vol¬ 
ume  II.,  Chapter  I.,  see  the  memoirs  of  the  Margravine  of  Baireuth,  the 
admirable  biography  by  Forster,  Friedrich  Wilhelm  and  also  Koser, 
Friedrich  der  Grosse  als  Kronprinz. 


While  the  empire  was  being  defrauded  at  Utrecht,  Ras- 
tadt,  and  Baden  of  the  just  fruits  of  its  long  war  with  Louis 
XIV.,  the  state  on  which  the  hope  of  the  future  rested  was 
entering  into  a  new  and  distinct  phase  of  its  history.  The 
process  of  training  had  begun  that  one  day  was  to  justify 
Prussia’s  mission  as  head  of  a  regenerated  Germany.  Her 
army  was  to  grow  to  be  the  first  in  Europe ;  her  financial 
administration  the  most  economical  and  the  least  corrupt ; 
her  kings  were  to  become  the  most  absolute,  but  at  the 
same  time  to  interest  themselves  most  deeply  in  the  affairs 
of  the  lowest  of  their  subjects. 

Frederick  William  I.,  who  came  to  the  throne  on  thej 
death  of  his  father  in  1713,  is  a  man  whose  character  has] 
been  grossly  misconceived  by  posterity.  What  happene( 
on  three  or  four  famous  and  widely  exploited  occasions} 
when  an  irritable  man  completely  lost  his  temper,  has  been 
made  to  outweigh  the  record  of  a  life  devoted  to  the  in¬ 
terests  of  his  people,  of  a  phenomenal  energy  that  never 
flagged  from  the  day  of  this  king’s  accession  to  the  day 
of  his  death,  of  a  talent  for  administration  such  as  few 
other  crowned  heads  have  ever  possessed,  of  a  regard  for 
rectitude  and  for  morality  that  transformed  the  whole  tone 
of  his  surroundings.  For  each  of  those  violent  outbursts, 

87 


The  vir¬ 
tues  of 
Frederick 
William  I. 


88 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  Mar¬ 
gravine  of 
Baireuth. 


—  which  were  seldom  completely  unjustified,  —  for  each 
time  that  his  cane  fell  on  the  backs  of  his  servants  or  of 
his  very  provoking  children,  one  might  chronicle  a  hundred 
wise  measures  for  the  comfort  and  welfare  of  his  people. 

There  is  a  very  evident  reason  for  the  misconception  of 
this  monarch’s  true  worth,  for  to  no  other  ruler  has  the 
lot  fallen  of  having  nourished  in  his  own  bosom  so  witty 
so  spiteful  and  so  unconscientious  a  biographer.  From 
behind  the  closed  doors  of  his  own  palace,  from  one  who 
was  with  him  day  by  day,  from  a  daughter  who  professes 
to  have  loved  and  honored  him,  we  have  one  of  the  most 
malicious  pictures  that  was  ever  drawn  of  any  man. 
The  only  excuse  is  that  the  Margravine  of  Baireuth  could 
never  have  intended  her  memoirs  to  be  published,  if  indeed 
she  ever  meant  them  to  be  taken  seriously  at  all.  Droysen 
has  proved  that  the  letters  reproduced  at  length  are  not 
genuine,  while  the  memoirs  themselves  teem  with  self- 
contradictions.  Was  the  whole  thing  intended  as  a  mere 
literary  exercise  ?  Wilhelmine  herself  speaks  of  a  talent 
for  pitiless  satirizing  very  much  in  vogue  in  her  century ; 
she  tells  how  she  once  read  the  comic  novels  of  a  certain 
Scarron,  and  with  the  aid  of  her  brother  applied  the  satires 
to  persons  at  court,  not  sparing  even  the  king.  44  I  dare 
fiot  even  say  what  a  r61e  he  played,”  she  writes ;  44  we 
diowed  them  to  the  queen,  who  was  vastly  amused.” 
O^gain  she  relates  how  frightened  she  was  at  losing  some 
letters  that  spoke  of  the  king  in  44  pretty  strong  language,” 
how  deeply  she  regrets  her  disrespectfulness  and  her  evil 
tongue ;  and  she  ends  up  with  what  gives  us  the  keynote 
to  the  whole  mystery:  44 1  did  it,”  she  says,  “more  to  show  my 
cleverness  and  my  good  ideas  than  because  I  had  a  bad  heart.” 

The  Frederick  William  of  Wilhelmine’s  pages  is  a  be¬ 
ing  who  carouses  until  four  o’clock  in  the  morning ;  who 
starves  his  children,  and  even  expectorates  into  their  food 


THE  FATHER  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


89 


to  make  it  the  more  unpleasant ;  who  tries  to  strangle  his 
son  with  the  curtain  rope,  and  knocks  his  daughter  sense¬ 
less  by  striking  her  44  three  tremendous  blows  in  the  face.” 
Yet  even  if  all  this  were  true,  it  seems  almost  pardonable 
in  view  of  the  pictures  the  margravine  unconsciously 
draws  of  herself  and  of  the  queen  her  mother.  At  the  age 
of  ten  Wilhelmine  knows  all  the  worst  court  scandal,  and  is 
told  by  the  queen  to  be  rude  to  44  three-quarters  of  Berlin.” 
The  two  women,  later,  manage  to  write  —  in  lemon  juice 
which  can  only  be  read  when  held  to  the  fire  —  nearly  fifteen 
hundred  letters  to  the  young  crown  prince ;  in  a  moment 
of  danger  they  purloin  the  casket  in  which  these  are  con¬ 
tained,  forge  a  whole  series  of  new  letters,  and  counterfeit 
the  seal.  Their  own  correspondence  is  carried  on  by  notes 
concealed  in  cheeses.  Both  constantly  simulate  illness,  and 

Wilhelmine  holds  balls  of  hot  lead  under  the  coverlet  to 

** 

make  it  appear  she  has  a  fever.  Spies  and  villains,  plots 
and  intrigues,  swoons  and  violence,  hidings  behind  screens 
and  in  cupboards,  meet  us  at  every  turn. 

The  real  Frederick  William  was  a  rugged  genius  with 
strongly  marked  peculiarities  and  with  a  determination  to 
carry  absolutism  to  its  logical  conclusion.  He  intended, 
he  once  declared,  to  establish  Prussian  sovereignty  on  a 
44 rock  of  bronze”;  and  he  considered  himself  accountable 
for  his  actions  to  God  alone.  44 1  have  no  money,”  was  his 
usual  answer  to  towns  that  petitioned  for  unnecessary 
improvements ;  and  he  once  wrote  to  an  official,  44  Salvation 
belongs  to  the  Lord,  and  everything  else  is  my  affair.” 
Strangely  enough,  he  was  unaware  that  his  temper  was 
violent.  44  God  knows  I  am  entirely  too  tranquil,”  he  once 
declared ;  44  if  I  were  more  choleric,  I  think  things  would  go 
better.”  In  addition  to  his  children  and  his  servants,  his 
cane  fell  upon  negligent  soldiers  and  upon  those  of  his 
subjects  whom  he  discovered  in  idleness  or  wrong-doing. 


Wilhel- 
mine’s 
picture  of 
her  father 
and  of 
herself. 


The  real 
Frederick 
William  I. 


90 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Retrench¬ 
ments  of 
Frederick 
William  I. 


More  serious  punishments  he  inflicted,  too,  which  were  out 
of  proportion  to  the  nature  of  the  offence.  He  was  eco¬ 
nomical  to  a  degree  that  was  often  branded  as  penury,  knew 
how  to  drive  a  hard  bargain,  and  often  insisted  on  his 
bond  when  common  humanity  would  seem  to  have  called 
for  leniency.  His  manners  were  rough,  his  vein  of  humor 
coarse,  his  sense  of  the  beautiful  decidedly  limited.  Yet 
often  we  find  an  underlying  principle  of  good  in  his  acts  of 
harshness  and  severity;  far  better  err  on  the  wrong  side 
than  fall  into  the  spendthrift  laxness  of  a  Charles  YI.  or 
an  Augustus  the  Strong.  Frederick  William’s  personality 
is  constantly  cropping  out  through  the  driest  of  his  state 
papers ;  his  marginal  notes  to  the  daily  reports  of  his  min¬ 
isters  mount  up  into  the  thousands  and  are  a  running 
commentary  on  his  character.  They  show  an  industry,  an 
attention  to  detail  that  is  fairly  phenomenal. 

Quidquid  vult  vehementer  vult ,  writes  a  Saxon  envoy  of 
Frederick  William,  and  this  quality  of  impetuosity  he  showed 
from  the  very  first  moment  of  his  accession.  His  fixed  idea 
—  which  had  come  to  him,  doubtless,  in  the  camp  at  Mal- 
plaquet  where  he  had  sharply  resented  the  imputation  that 
without  foreign  subsidies  his  father  could  not  maintain  a 
respectable  army — was  the  necessity  of  making  Prussia  into 
a  strong  military  power.  For  this,  money  was  required; 
and  the  first  step  in  the  way  of  procuring  it  was  economy. 
The  old  king  had  not  been  dead  for  half  an  hour  when  the 
young  heir,  whose  pink  and  white  complexion  and  friendly 
blue  eyes  had  given  no  reason  to  expect  such  a  sternness 
of  character,  called  for  the  household  accounts  and  drew 
a  line  through  the  whole  list  of  court  lackeys  and  pages. 
They  appeared  for  the  last  time  at  the  gorgeous  funeral 
which  was  the  final  concession  of  a  good  son  to  the  weak¬ 
ness  of  his  father ;  they  formed  part  in  a  rich  tableau  that 
represented  the  end  of  a  whole  era  in  Prussian  history. 


THE  FATHER  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


91 


They  then  vanished  into  thin  air,  as  did  Frederick  William’s 
own  great  French  wig  and  long  mourning  garments.  The 
court  poet,  the  upper  master  of  heraldry,  the  twenty-five 
trumpeters,  went  the  same  way ;  while  the  jewels  that  had 
ornamented  the  late  king’s  pall,  and  the  countless  trinkets 
and  gewgaws  that  he  had  collected,  were  sold  to  pay  his 
outstanding  debts  and  to  support  new  regiments.  The 
household  was  reorganized  on  the  simplest  possible  basis : 
three  pages  at  ten  thalers  a  month  on  which  they  had  to 
board  themselves ;  thirty  riding  horses  instead  of  one 
thousand.  The  table  was  to  be  simple  but  good ;  and  over 
against  Wilhelmine’s  calumnies  in  this  regard,  we  must 
place  the  explicit  orders,  preserved  in  the  archives,  that 
the  queen  and  her  children  were  to  have  private  dishes 
“according  to  their  gusto.”  We  know  of  the  crown 
prince,  on  good  authority,  that  he  loved  les  petits  plats  et 
les  hauts  goitts.  Queen  Sophie  Dorothea  was  given  a 
yearly  allowance  of  eighty  thousand  thalers  for  living  ex¬ 
penses  and  for  the  clothing  of  herself  and  ten  children ; 
while  from  the  former  privy  purse,  which  was  turned  over 
to  the  general  state-fund,  the  king  reserved  for  himself  but 
fifty-two  thousand  thalers.  This  beginning  of  a  reform 
with  his  own  person  was  characteristic  of  him  throughout 
his  reign  ;  he  held  his  officials  to  exact  punctuality  under 
penalty  of  heavy  fines,  but  he  himself  was  busy  hearing 
reports  at  five  o’clock  in  the  morning.  The  excise  duties 
were  very  onerous;  but  goods  purchased  for  the  royal 
household  were  not  exempted,  and  the  king’s  wagons  were 
searched  at  the  gates  like  those  of  any  commoner.  By 
medical  advice,  it  was  customary  to  bleed  the  whole  army  at 
least  once  a  year;  when  the  time  came  round,  Frederick 
William  sat  out  on  his  porch  within  view  of  his  soldiers 
and  was  the  first  to  bare  his  arm. 

The  reforms  begun  in  the  royal  household  were  carried 


92 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Centraliza¬ 
tion  of  the 
administra¬ 
tion. 


out  through  the  whole  length  and  breadth  of  the  land, 
although  the  task  was  Herculean  because  of  the  many 
forces  that  were  pulling  in  different  directions.  The  more 
recently  acquired  provinces  had  never  been  brought  into  a 
firm  relationship  with  the  Mark  Brandenburg :  under  the 
lax  rule  of  Frederick  I.,  Cleves,  Magdeburg,  Halberstadt, 
Prussian  Pomerania,  and  East  Prussia  had  retained  their 
old  faulty  local  administration,  and  the  proud,  narrow¬ 
minded  nobility  still  exercised  considerable  influence. 
The  cities  enjoyed  a  large  measure  of  autonomy,  the  chief 
magisterial  positions  remaining,  by  tacit  consent,  in  the 
hands  of  a  few  influential  families.  The  reforms  of  the 
great  elector,  indeed,  had  not  been  entirely  without 
result :  the  people  knew  the  value  and  need  of  a  standing 
army,  and  had  come  to  see  that  certain  public  burdens 
must  of  necessity  be  borne.  But  the  control  had  been 
insufficient ;  the  competency  of  the  numerous  bureaus,  ex¬ 
chequers,  and  governing  boards  had  not  been  clearly  fixed; 
there  was  no  economy  of  forces,  no  discipline,  no  routine. 
What  was  most  needed  was  a  caste  or  class  of  trained 
officials,  and  to  procure  this,  the  king’s  service  had  to  be 
made  more  honorable  and  more  desirable,  but  at  the  same 
time  more  rigid.  The  first  years  of  Frederick  William’s 
reign  mark  an  era  in  all  of  these  matters.  The  young 
monarch’s  leading  thought  was  so  to  centralize  and  sys¬ 
tematize  all  things  that  he  himself,  as  from  a  coin  of  van¬ 
tage,  could  at  any  time  cast  his  eye  over  the  whole  field. 
He  believed  that  a  king,  who  “  wished  to  rule  with  honneur 
in  the  world,”  must  do  everything  himself,  for  “  rulers  are 
put  there  for  the  purpose  of  working.”  And  he  fully  lived 
up  to  his  creed.  “  No  one  who  has  not  seen  it  can  believe,” 
writes  Seckendorf,  the  Austrian  envoy,  “that  one  single 
man,  be  he  ever  so  intelligent,  could  do  so  much  and  settle 
so  many  matters  in  the  progress  of  a  day.” 


THE  FATHER  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


93 


In  the  course  of  a  few  months,  the  army  was  reorganized 
on  a  new  basis  and  with  seven  new  regiments ;  old  feudal 
military  services,  which  could  no  longer  be  literally  per¬ 
formed,  were  commuted  for  a  fixed  yearly  sum  of  money 
which  went  to  the  paying  of  recruits  ;  a  revision  of  the 
whole  legal  system  was  ordered.  The  king  said  in  his  edict, 
“  one  month  is  already  gone,  in  eleven  more  the  Landrecht 
(or  code)  must  be  ready  for  the  whole  land  ”  —  a  command 
which  it  proved  impossible  to  strictly  carry  out.  The  civil 
administration  was  simplified  by  cashiering  several  of  the 
many  boards.  The  question  of  taxation  was  next  taken  in 
hand,  and  it  was  found  that,  particularly  in  East  Prussia, 
fraud  and  concealment  had  long  been  rampant  —  many 
of  the  nobles  paying  but  the  sixth  part  of  what  was  really 
due  on  their  lands.  A  whole  new  assessment  for  the  prov¬ 
ince  had  to  be  made ;  and  on  such  sound  and  thorough  prin¬ 
ciples  was  this  done,  that  the  same  schedule  was  adopted 
fifty  years  later  for  the  new  acquisitions  of  Silesia  and 
West  Prussia.  It  met  all  the  same,  at  the  time,  with  fierce 
opposition;  and  the  king’s  own  official  sent  a  protest  to  the 
effect  that  the  whole  country  would  be  ruined.  “  The 
whole  country  ruined !  ”  ran  the  marginal  note  to  the 
report  in  a  hideous  mixture  of  languages.  “  I  don’t  believe 
a  word  of  it,  but  I  do  believe  that,  as  to  the  squires,  their 
authority  and  their  liberum  veto  will  be  ruined !  ”  1 

Not  the  least  important  of  the  reforms  was  the  require¬ 
ment  of  a  budget,  or  previous  estimate,  for  all  public  out¬ 
lays  in  all  parts  of  the  kingdom.  Not  a  penny  was  to  be 
spent  for  which  the  king  had  not  given  his  express  consent ; 
and  he  remorselessly  cut  down  all  demands  by  about  one- 
third.  He  wrote  on  the  edge  of  a  ministerial  report,  which 

1  Tout  le  pays  sera  mine  ?  Nihil  kredo,  aber  das  kredo,  dass  die 
Junkers  ihre  Autoritat  Nie  pos  volarn  (Polish)  wird  ruinirt  werden.  Ich 
stabilire  die  Souverainet6  wie  einen  Rocher  von  Bronce.  — F.  W. 


Frederick 

William’s 

activity. 


94 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  “  In¬ 
struction” 
of  1723. 


asked  for  three  hundred  and  fifteen  thalers  to  repair  a 
toll-house  in  Frankfort,  “Is  it  a  castle?  Twenty-four 
thalers  !  ”  To  the  governing  board  in  the  new  Mark,  which 
had  petitioned  for  a  building  in  Ciistrin  to  hold  the  public 
documents,  he  sent  word,  “  There  is  room  enough  in  the 
castle  for  all  the  archives  of  London,  Paris,  and  Berlin.” 

In  spite,  however,  of  all  that  was  done  in  the  first  ten 
years  of  this  reign,  these  were  but  the  period  of  gestation 
for  the  great  measure  that  was  passed  in  the  first  days  of 
the  year  1723.  The  “Instruction  for  the  General  Upper 
Finance,  War  and  Domain  Directory”  was  the  crown  of 
all  Frederick  William’s  administrative  endeavors,  the 
crunching  of  the  heel  on  all  the  “Schlendrian”  or  laxness 
of  former  days.  It  was  a  codification  of  life  principles, 
such  as  only  a  St.  Benedict,  a  Calvin,  or  an  Ignatius  Loyola 
had  hitherto  accomplished ;  and  it  continued  to  be  used  as 
a  rule  for  Prussian  officialdom  until  the  end  of  all  things  in 
1806.  It  was  Frederick  William’s  own  most  private  work : 
he  went  into  seclusion  in  his  hunting-box,  at  Schonebeck, 
until  he  had  thought  it  all  out,  then  called  in  one  of  his 
privy  councillors  to  put  it  in  shape,  and  prepared  to  im¬ 
pose  it  on  his  unwary  ministers.  When  his  “  thunder-bolt,” 
as  he  called  it,  at  last  fell,  he  requested  his  friend  and 
general,  Prince  Leopold  of  Dessau,  to  write  him  “what 
kind  of  faces  the  gentlemen  made  and  whether  they  were 
confus  or  calm.” 

This  splendid  monument  of  absolutism  bears  the  effigy 
of  its  founder  in  every  one  of  its  lines.  The  monarch 
himself  is  the  apex  of  everything,  “We  are  lord  and  king, 
and  can  do  what  we  will.”  All  the  same,  “We  wish  that 
any  odium,  however  undeserved,  should  fall  not  on  us, 
who  are  chary  of  the  love  and  devotion  of  our  subjects  and 
the  friendship  of  our  neighbors,  but  on  the  General  Upper 
Finance,  War  and  Domain  Directory,  or  on  one  or  other  of 


THE  FATHER  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


95 


the  members  of  the  same,  unless  it  shall  prove  possible  to 
make  the  public  change  its  bad  opinion.” 

Under  the  king,  is  the  new  central  governing  board  con¬ 
sisting  of  five  ministers  —  each  of  which  is  head  of  a  depart¬ 
ment —  and  of  a  number  of  councillors  and  secretaries. 
Under  this  board,  again,  are  the  local  and  provincial  boards 
and  exchequers.  This  new  General  Directory  replaces  the 
old  war  commissariat  as  well  as  the  former  Finance  Direc¬ 
tory,  with  both  of  which  Frederick  William  by  this  time 
was  completely  out  of  conceit:  “for  one  board  is  always 
trying  to  abstract  from  the  other  some  of  its  special  rights 
and  revenues  in  order  to  make  a  parade  before  us  and  to 
cause  us  to  think  that  our  revenues  are  being  increased  by 
so  much,  when  in  reality  we  have  lost  just  as  much  on  the 
other  side.”  And  further  on  :  u  The  war-exchequer  belongs 
to  no  one  else  but  the  king  in  Prussia ;  item  the  domain- 
exchequer.  We  hope  that  we  are  he  and  that  we  have  no 
need  either  of  a  guardian  or  of  an  assistant .”  The  new 
directory  is  to  avoid  everything  that  has  to  do  with  Wind 
und  blaue  Dunst  —  with  “wind  and  blue  vapor” ;  in  modern 
parlance,  with  the  “green  table  ”  or  with  “ red  tape.”  The 
old  disputes,  that  took  up  so  much  time  under  the  former 
boards,  are  to  cease  forever,  and  the  new  members  are  to 
live  together  in  harmony.  If  they  keep  their  minds  and 
faculties  on  the  king’s  service,  they  “  will  all  have  their 
hands  full  and  will  not  need  to  campaign  with  lawsuits 
against  each  other.  But  the  poor  lawyers,  poor  devils, 
will  be  as  inutil  as  the  fifth  wheel  on  the  cart !  ” 

The  system  of  control  inaugurated  by  the  “  Instruction  ” 
was  one  of  the  most  elaborate  ever  invented,  even  when 
compared  with  that  of  the  Jesuits.  Its  weakness  was, 
that  it  stood  or  fell  with  the  character  and  predilections 
of  the  head  of  the  state.  It  worked  well  under  Frederick 
William  I.  who  was  determined,  as  he  said,  that  all  oppor- 


The  new 

governing 

boards. 


The  system 
of  control. 


96 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


tunity  should  be  taken  away  from  “  undutiful  rogues  ”  of 
“  blowing  into  one  horn  ”  to  deceive  him.  The  members 
of  the  General  Directory  were  to  assemble  daily,  in  sum¬ 
mer  at  seven,  in  winter  at  eight  o’clock  in  the  morning. 
A  minister  or  councillor  who  should  be  an  hour  late  was 
to  pay  a  fine  of  a  hundred  ducats  ;  for  an  unexcused  absence 
of  a  whole  day,  six  months  of  his  salary.  On  the  occasion 
of  a  second  offence  he  was  to  be  cashiered :  “  for  that  is  what 
we  pay  them  for,  to  work.”  Every  evening  a  protocol  of  the 
day’s  proceedings  was  to  be  drawn  up  and  submitted  to  the 
king,  and  every  week  reports  were  to  be  laid  before  him 
from  all  the  provinces.  Personal  questions  might  be  asked 
on  doubtful  points,  provided  they  were  couched  in  few 
words  and  “ nerveus  ”  or  sinewy.  The  ministers,  who  are 
warned  “  not  to  be  sleepy,  as  it  were,  and  not  to  act  as 
if  they  had  no  inquietude ,”  were  to  be  held  responsible,  not 
so  much  for  what  had  been  reported  to  them  by  the  pro¬ 
vincial  officials  as  for  the  actual  facts  of  the  case.  They 
were  to  know  the  minutissima  of  what  went  on  in  all  parts 
of  the  kingdom,  and  in  order  to  obtain  this  knowledge  they 
were  not  only  to  send  commissioners  to  supervise  the  work 
of  the  officials,  but  also  to  employ  a  large  number  of  spies 
among  all  classes  of  the  population,  and,  if  need  be,  to  send 
secret  agents  from  Berlin.  The  provincial  reports  were  to 
be  carefully  audited,  not  only  by  the  minister  whose  depart¬ 
ment  might  happen  to  be  concerned,  but  also  in  pleno  ;  and 
a  sharp  lookout  was  to  be  kept  in  order  to  ascertain  “  if 
human  intrigues  and  passions  have  not  something  to  do 
with  the  case.”  Should  there  be  a  stoppage  in  any  source 
of  revenue,  and  the  cause  be  not  discernible  as  “plainly 
as  the  sun  in  the  heavens,”  a  member  of  the  Directory  was 
to  repair  at  once  in  person  to  the  spot. 

The  provincial  officials  themselves  were  to  be  most  care¬ 
fully  chosen  from  thoroughly  trained  men  with  “open 


THE  FATHER  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


97 


heads,”  and  they  were  to  know  their  districts  “  even  as  we 
pretend  that  a  captain  of  our  army  knows  his  company  and 
the  inward  and  outward  qualities  of  each  soldier  that  be¬ 
longs  to  it.”  Every  attempt  at  peculation  was  to  be  mer¬ 
cilessly  struck  down,  death  being  the  penalty  even  for 
comparatively  small  thefts.  Frederick  William  knew  well 
what  was  the  cancerous  evil  of  his  day  ;  it  has  been  carefully 
reckoned  that  in  Austria  in  1700,  out  of  revenues  amount¬ 
ing  to  fourteen  million  guldens  only  four  million  ever  found 
their  way  to  their  proper  destination.  As  a  particular  safe¬ 
guard,  the  “  Instruction  ”  provides  that  officials  are  not  to 
serve  in  the  town  or  province  in  which  they  were  brought 
up ;  this  will  give  them  fewer  “  inducements  to  fraud  and 
deceit,”  and  remove  them  from  the  baneful  influence  of 
their  “  Gevatterschaften  and  Connoissancen ,”  their  gossips 
and  acquaintances.  This  king  is  rigidly  determined  that 
a  summary  end  shall  be  put  to  alle  Sudeleien,  to  all  dirty 
and  underhanded  work.  All  irregular  expenses  too,  and 
all  sudden  calls  on  the  treasury,  are  to  be  stopped:  “We 
are  as  tired  of  them  as  though  they  had  been  shovelled 
with  spoons  into  our  mouth.”  To  cover  these  fluc-flao 
items,  a  sum  of  two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  thalers 
is  set  aside,  and  the  Directory  has  to  see  that  it  does  not 
spend  a  Pfennig  more.  The  strictest  possible  thorough¬ 
ness  and  punctuality  is  to  be  observed  in  making  up  the 
budgets,  which  are  infallibly  to  be  ready  by  a  certain  day : 
“  The  gentlemen  will  say  it  is  not  possible,  but  they  shall 
put  their  heads  down  to  it,  and  we  herewith  command  them 
emphatically,  that  they  shall  make  it  possible  sonder 
Raisonirenf  —  without  any  attempt  at  argument  at  all. 

No  monarch  since  Charlemagne  had  personally  worked 
out  as  did  Frederick  William,  not  merely  the  broad  out¬ 
lines  of  a  great  administrative  system,  but  also  the  smallest 
details,  such  as  the  way  to  find  a  market  for  the  butter  of 


The  re¬ 
quirements 
of  officials. 


Efforts  to 
increase  the 
revenue. 


VOL.  II - H 


98 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OP  GERMANY 


Intro¬ 
duction  of 
colonists. 


East  Prussia  ;  how  the  beer  of  twenty-seven  other  towns, 
which  are  mentioned  by  name,  might  be  made  as  good  as 
that  of  Potsdam  ;  how  foreign  weavers  might  be  brought 
to  Prussia  by  the  bait  of  a  loom,  a  wife,  and  an  advance 
of  raw  material.  Many  of  the  articles  of  this  very  lengthy 
document  are  filled  with  a  careful  explanation  of  how  in¬ 
vestments,  which  show  an  apparent  profit,  may  turn  out  to 
be  no  real  improvement  —  keine  Besserung ,  Ergo  Wind . 

In  two  great  departments,  the  exploitation  of  the  crown 
lands  and  the  training  and  equipment  of  the  army,  Fred¬ 
erick  William  outdid  all  the  other  European  monarchs  of 
his  day.  The  so-called  royal  domains  —  consisting  of  origi¬ 
nal  grants,  of  lapsed  fiefs,  of  purchases,  secularized  benefices, 
and  heritages  of  all  kinds  —  amounted  in  all  to  nearly  one- 
third  of  the  territory  of  the  Prussian  state.  The  revenues 
from  them  were  equal  to  those  from  all  other  sources  com¬ 
bined,  but,  like  private  estates,  they  needed  care  and  atten¬ 
tion.  In  the  forests  the  wood  must  be  carefully  cut  and 
not  squandered,  the  fields  were  to  be  kept  well  fertilized* 
the  meadows  drained  and  protected  by  dikes.  When 
Frederick  William  took  them  in  hand,  he  found  them 
heavily  mortgaged,  and  occupied  by  a  poor  class  of  tenants  ; 
during  his  whole  reign  he  devoted  himself  to  making  them 
flourishing  and  profitable.  And  so  well  did  he  succeed 
that  he  raised  the  yearly  income  from  them  by  two  million 
thalers.  The  system  that  he  adopted  of  farming  them  out 
in  large  districts,  or  cimter ,  is  the  one  that  is  in  vogue  at 
the  present  day. 

And  not  only  did  he  pay  off  the  debts  and  burdens,  but 
he  settled  the  waste  places  with  thrifty  colonists  at  an 
enormous  outlay,  which  returned  to  him  later,  in  the  form 
of  taxes  and  excise  duties,  not  to_speak  of  stalwart  men  for 
his  army.  Such  wholesale  damage  had  war  and  pestilence 
done,  especially  in  East  Prussia — where  the  plague  of  1709- 


THE  FATHER  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


99 


1710  destroyed  between  a  third  and  a  half  of  the  entire 
population  —  that  the  colonization  had  to  be  conducted  on 
a  very  extensive  scale.  Before  the  end  of  his  reign  this 
thrifty  monarch  was  able  to  look  down  proudly  on  thou¬ 
sands  of  colonists,  the  great  majority  of  whom  had  come 
to  Prussia  under  special  contract  with  the  government. 
The  sums  expended  in  the  venture  are  calculated  to  have 
averaged  six  hundred  thalers  for  each  family ;  while  in  East 
Prussia  alone  six  millions  were  spent  in  draining  and  other 
improvements.  For  a  monarch  whose  chit  of  a  daughter 
has  dubbed  him  parsimonious,  this  was  a  pretty  fair  show¬ 
ing.  On  the  occasion  of  his  first  journey  through  these 
rescued  provinces,  Frederick  the  Great  wrote  to  Voltaire 
that  there  was  something  grand  and  poetical  in  the  thought 
of  it;  and  again,  “Just  as  the  all-shadowing  oak  springs 
from  the  power  in  the  acorn,  so  does  all  my  later  good  for¬ 
tune  proceed  from  the  toilsome  life  and  the  wise  measures 
of  Frederick  William.” 

Of  all  single  transactions  in  the  way  of  colonization,  none 
was  more  famous  at  the  time,  and  none  has  left  pleasanter 
memories, 1  than  that  by  which  nearly  the  whole  of  a  per¬ 
secuted  community,  driven  from  the  archbishopric  of  Salz¬ 
burg,  was  received  into  East  Prussia  and  allowed  to  found 
six  new  towns  and  many  villages.  For  two  centuries,  half 
overlooked  and  half  silently  tolerated,  the  Protestant  Salz¬ 
burgers  had  lived  in  peace  with  their  Catholic  rulers  and 
neighbors ;  but  in  Archbishop  Firmian,  who  was  raised  to 
the  see  in  1727,  the  church  found  a  defender  of  the  stern 
old  mediaeval  type.  The  Jesuits  were  called  in  to  reclaim 
the  lost  sheep ;  they  decided  that  all  the  orthodox  should 
know  each  other  by  the  greeting,  “Praised  be  Jesus 
Christ,”  a  formula  in  favor  with  Pope  Benedict  XIII.,  who 


Persecution 
of  the 
Salzburg 
Protestants. 


1  Goethe’s  Hermann  und  Dorothea  deals  with  this  episode. 


100 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Reception 
of  the 
Salzburg 
Protes¬ 
tants  in 
Prussia. 


had  promised  absolution  of  sins  to  all  who  should  answer 
“  Forever  and  ever,  Amen.”  Against  those  who  would  not 
be  converted  the  strongest  measures  were  employed,  and 
banishment  and  imprisonment  became  the  order  of  the  day. 
Some  of  the  exiles  repaired  to  Ratisbon  to  complain  to  the 
Diet  of  the  breach  of  the  Peace  of  Westphalia;  but  that 
cumbrous  body,  as  usual,  was  slow  to  act.  Better  fortune 
attended  two  who  appeared  in  Berlin.  They  refuted,  by 
submitting  to  be  catechized,  the  calumny  that  they  were 
heretics,  and  managed  to  arouse  general  sympathy  and  in¬ 
terest.  When,  in  1731,  a  comprehensive  edict  of  banish¬ 
ment  was  issued  by  the  ferocious  archbishop,  and  soldiers 
proceeded  to  drive  out  the  nonconformists  in  crowds, 
Frederick  William  stepped  forward  as  their  protector,  sent 
commissioners  with  money  to  pay  the  journey  of  as  many 
as  would  come  to  him,  and  intimidated  the  archbishop 
with  threats  of  reprisal.  From  the  moment,  he  declared, 
that  the  exiles  accepted  his  offer,  they  were  to  be  treated  as 
his  subjects ;  and  he  even  obtained  for  them  several  million 
thalers  in  compensation  for  their  lands  and  houses. 

The  journey  of  the  fugitives  was  soon  transformed  into 
a  triumphal  progress.  The  burghers  of  the  towns  near  which 
they  passed  came  out  in  crowds  to  meet  them,  bearing  food 
and  presents  of  every  kind ;  men  and  women  high  in  rank 
delighted  to  serve  them  with  their  own  hands.  The  king 
received  them  in  person  at  Potsdam ;  the  queen  invited 
hundreds  at  a  time  to  her  little  toy  castle  of  Monbijou. 
The  royal  painter,  Pesne,  was  ordered  to  make  a  portrait 
of  one  of  the  maidens ;  while  an  antiquary  avers  that  the 
Berlin  fashions  were  suddenly  influenced  to  a  remarkable 
degree,  —  little  pointed  Salzburg  hats  and  other  character¬ 
istic  objects  coming  into  high  favor. 

It  was  not  unnatural  that,  after  being  so  feted  on  the 
way,  many  found  it  difficult  to  come  down  to  the  hard 


THE  FATHER  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  101 


realities  of  East  Prussian  life,  —  especially  as  they  arrived 
there  at  the  beginning  of  a  hard  northern  winter.  In  the 
next  few  years  were  heard  much  murmuring  and  bitter 
complaints  to  the  effect  that  things  were  not  as  they  had 
been  represented.  After  a  time,  however,  the  friction  sub¬ 
sided,  and  the  Salzburgers  showed  in  many  ways  that  they 
were  not  only  good  citizens,  but  even  more  intelligent  than 
the  great  majority  of  their  neighbors. 

In  entering  upon  the  closer  consideration  of  Frederick 
William’s  military  reforms,  we  come  to  the  field  in  which, 
taken  all  in  all,  he  felt  himself  the  most  at  home,  and  in 
which,  in  the  end,  he  was  able  to  show  the  most  tangible 
results.  Despite  his  untiring  industry  in  other  regards,  it 
is  easy  to  see  that  his  heart  was  all  the  while  with  his 
army  :  here  he  was  not  only  king,  but  a  soldier  to  the  core. 
From  1725  on,  he  never  appeared  in  public,  save  in  his  blue 
uniform.  He  was  determined  that  the  soldiery  should  no 
longer  be  looked  down  upon  as  they  had  been  since  the  days  of 
the  Thirty  Years’  War :  if  he  showed  them  unwarranted  favor 
as  opposed  to  civilians,  it  must  be  remembered  that  he  had 
a  needful  mission  to  perform,  —  the  reconciling  for  all  time 
of  the  military  and  the  national  ideal.  The  soldiers  were 
to  be  made  to  feel  that  the  country  they  were  defending 
was  their  own ;  the  citizens,  that  there  was  no  higher  duty 
than  that  which  the  soldier  was  performing. 

It  is  true,  during  the  first  half  of  Frederick  William’s 
reign,  two-thirds  of  the  army  consisted  of  foreigners  ;  there 
were  tim,es  when  nearly  a  thousand  recruiting  officers  were 
busy  beyond  the  boundaries,  engaging  men  for  high  pay 
and,  as  often  as  not,  kidnapping  those  who  would  not 
come  of  their  own  accord.  But  time  showed  the  impera¬ 
tive  need  of  a  new  system.  The  expense  was  enormous,  the 
violence  of  the  press-gangs  led  to  reprisals  and  to  inter¬ 
national  complications ;  while,  in  spite  of  the  heavy  punish- 


The 

cantonal 
system  of 
recruiting 
the  army. 


102 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  nobles 
as  officers 
in  the 
army. 


merits,  the  number  of  desertions  was  ruinous.  In  1783, 
accordingly,  the  king  passed  a  measure  which  has  been  well 
termed  the  first  step  on  the  way  to  general  compulsory 
military  service.  The  whole  land  was  divided  into  districts 
called  cantons,  each  one  containing  some  five  thousand 
hearths  or  families ;  each  regiment  had  its  own  canton 
from  which  to  draw  its  recruits,  keeping  a  roll  of  the  young 
men  from  whom  it  was  to  choose.  It  was  a  levelling  process 
of  very  great  importance,  and  some  of  the  nobles  opposed  it 
bitterly ;  for  their  serfs,  instead  of  remaining  blindly  obedient 
to  them,  had  now  other  interests  and  other  ideals.  It  is  true 
there  was  a  liberal  system  of  furloughs,  but  the  men  who 
came  back,  wearing  the  king’s  collar  and  the  king’s  cockade, 
were  a  different  class  of  beings  from  the  sons  of  the  soil 
who  had  marched  out.  It  was  Frederick  William’s  out¬ 
spoken  aim  to  make  things  more  comfortable  for  them  in 
their  regiment  than  they  were  at  home ;  they  were  taught 
to  read  and  write,  and  were  well  fed,  clothed,  and  lodged. 

An  important  levelling  process  in  the  opposite  direction, 
yet  one  that  worked  equally  astounding  results,  was  the 
forcing  of  the  sons  of  nobles  to  accept  military  commands ; 
they  had  held  aloof  hitherto  from  a  service  which  promised 
little  honor  or  emolument.  In  his  usual  radical  manner, 
Frederick  William  changed  all  this,  dismissing  officers  of 
low  birth  or  mean  sentiments,  and  gradually  filling  their 
places  from  the  best  elements  of  the  population.  A  cry  of 
indignation  went  through  the  land  when  it  was  found  that 
he  had  sent  his  police  and  under-officers  to  gather  in  the 
sons  of  the  old  country  families  for  his  Cadetten-Anstalt,  or 
training-school  at  Berlin.  Many  of  the  parents  in  their  de¬ 
spair  tried  to  prove  that  they  were  not  noble  at  all.  But  the 
king  remained  firm,  and  continued  on  his  way.  We  have  a 
letter  that  he  sent  to  the  nobles  in  East  Prussia,  telling  them 
that  their  sons  were  being  brought  up  on  Christian  principles 


/ 


THE  FATHER  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  103 


and  instructed  in  all  the  necessary  branches,  not  excepting 
fencing  and  dancing :  “Twenty -four  of  them  at  a  time  are 
taught  to  ride  free  of  charge ;  besides,  they  are  lodged  in 
clean  rooms  and  have  good  healthy  food  and  drink.” 

It  was  the  last  step  in  the  subjugation  of  the  old  stubborn 
estates  ;  they  were  not  only  rendered  docile  and  harmless, 
but  they  gained  a  new  occupation,  and  became  of  the 
greatest  service  to  their  country.  Accustomed  to  com¬ 
mand  at  home,  they  easily  fell  into  the  habit  of  command¬ 
ing  in  the  field  —  their  separate  interests  vanished,  and 
they  have  remained  to  this  day  the  strongest  pillars  of  the 
Prussian  throne. 

Apart  from  his  efforts  toward  strengthening  the  broader 
framework  of  his  army,  Frederick  William  devoted  himself 
to  the  minor  details  with  unswerving  perseverance.  His 
right-hand  man  was  Prince  Leopold,  the  “  old  Dessauer,” 
who  taught  him  much  in  the  way  of  tactics  and  evolutions. 
He  it  was  who  introduced  the  custom  of  marching  in  step, 
the  fixed  bayonet,  the  iron  ramrod,  the  quick  fire.  His 
regiment  at  Halle  and  the  king’s  at  Potsdam  were  the 
models  for  the  whole  land.  Frederick  William  drilled  his 
grenadiers  in  person,  and  allowed  not  the  smallest  irregu¬ 
larity,  not  even  a  tarnished  button,  to  escape  his  notice. 
The  men  were  drawn  up  on  parade  in  such  a  way  that  he 
could  pass  in  and  out  among  them  and  bring  down  his  cane 
on  the  shoulders  of  any  unfortunate  delinquent.  Yet  his 
“  dear  blue  children,”  as  he  called  them,  were  the  apple  of 
his  eye ;  he  was  willing  for  their  sake  to  make  any  kind  of 
sacrifice,  even  to  turn  a  deaf  ear  to  manifest  cases  of  in¬ 
justice  and  lawbreaking.  His  chief  pride  was  to  have  the 
men  of  the  largest  possible  ,  size  ;  and  every  court  in  Europe 
knew  that  the  way  to  gain  his  heart  was  to  send  him  lange 
Kerle.  We  have  the  letter  in  which  Count  Seckendorf 
writes  that  the  Prussian  officers  are  not  open  to  money 


Frederick 

William’s 

tall 

soldiers. 


104 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


bribes,  but  that  he  must  have  more  big  men  than  the  em¬ 
peror  has  seen  fit  to  send  him.  It  was  Frederick  William’s 
one  folly,  his  one  decided  extravagance ;  he  is  known  to 
have  paid  as  high  as  seven  thousand  thalers  for  one  fine 
specimen.  He  went  so  far  as  to  try  by  forced  marriages  to 
influence  the  next  generation;  tall  men  and  women  were 
sent  to  the  altar,  by  command,  who  had  never  seen  each 
other  the  day  before.  How  he  loved  these  giants  !  He 
talked  to  them  personally  and  listened  patiently  to  their 
complaints  and  desires ;  to  many  of  them  he  gave  houses  and 
fixed  incomes.  It  was  believed  that  he  could  never  refuse 
a  single  one  of  their  requests,  and  he  was  obliged,  at  last,  to 
make  it  a  law  that  outsiders  should  not  employ  them  as 
mediums  in  handing  in  petitions.  He  was  a  little  ashamed 
of  the  sums  they  cost  him,  for  on  his  death-bed  he  took  the 
trouble  to  destroy  the  records  of  his  different  purchases. 

Viewed  in  the  light  of  his  administrative  reforms,  the 
military  and  political  events  of  Frederick  William’s  reign 
seem  few  and  unimportant.  Once  at  the  beginning  of  that 
reign,  and  once  at  the  end,  Prussian  troops  saw  active  ser¬ 
vice;  the  period  between,  for  all  Europe,  was  a  time  of 
negotiations  that  led  to  nothing,  of  unfruitful  congresses, 
of  treaties  and  leagues  made  only  to  be  broken.  The  king’s 
first  war,  the  only  one  in  which  he  personally  played  an 
active  part,  lasted  but  a  few  weeks,  and  scarcely  rose  above 
the  level  of  an  execution  on  mortgaged  property.  The 
breakers  of  the  great  northern  struggle,  which  Charles  XII. 
of  Sweden  was  waging  against  Peter  the  Great,  had  dashed 
over  into  Swedish  Pomerania,  and,  in  1713,  Stettin  had 
fallen  into  Russian  hands.  By  the  treaty  of  Schwedt  in  the 
same  year,  Frederick  William  induced  the  victors,  in  return 
for  the  costs  of  the  siege  —  some  four  hundred  thousand 
thalers  —  to  withdraw,  and  to  leave  Stettin,  with  the  adja¬ 
cent  territory,  in  his  hands.  The  rightful  owner,  Charles 


THE  FATHER  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  105 


XIL,  had  been  an  exile  in  Turkey  since  the  disastrous  battle 
of  Pultava,  five  years  before.  He  returned  now,  after  a  wild 
and  adventurous  journey,  and  ordered  the  Prussian  king  to 
vacate  the  premises,  but  the  latter,  as  a  prime  condition, 
demanded  the  repayment  of  the  money  advanced  to  Russia. 

Refusing  to  treat  on  this  basis,  and  perhaps  divining  the 
eagerness  with  which  Frederick  William  looked  forward  to 
annexing  his  territory,  the  impetuous  Swede  threw  him¬ 
self  into  a  struggle  with  an  army  of  Russians,  Danes,  and 
Prussians,  three  times  the  size  of  his  own.  Frederick 
William  himself  appeared  in  camp;  and  assisted  in  the 
siege  of  Stralsund;  while  Prince  Leopold  of  Dessau  com¬ 
manded  a  force  of  twenty  thousand  men  which  landed  on 
the  island  of  Riigen.  With  a  loss  of  four  thousand  in 
killed  and  wounded,  the  Swedes  were  defeated,  and  Charles 
fled  for  his  life.  By  the  final  peace,  which  was  not  con¬ 
cluded  until  1720,  Prussia  became  the  richer  by  the 
coveted  Stettin,  which  controlled  the  mouth  of  the  Oder, 
and  by  that  part  of  Pomerania  south  of  the  river  Pesne. 

The  rest  was  restored  to  Sweden,  which  was  forced,  how¬ 
ever,  to  cede  to  Hanover  the  bishoprics  of  Verden  and 
Bremen.  Frederick  William  had  played  a  role  which,  as 
he  confessed  himself,  was  “  not  fit  for  an  honest  man,”  but 
it  doubtless  salved  his  conscience  that  he  was  obliged  by 
the  other  powers  to  pay  to  Sweden  an  indemnity  of  two 
million  thalers. 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say,  that  for  the  remainder  of  his  The  claim 
reign,  the  leading  thought  of  Frederick  William’s  foreign  to  Berg, 
policy  was  to  secure  for  Prussia  the  reversion  of  the 
Rhenish  duchy  of  Berg  —  a  part  of  that  ancient  Cleves 
inheritance  which  had  caused  so  many  pangs  in  the  pre¬ 
ceding  century.  By  the  last  settlement,  made  in  1666,  the 
house  of  Pfalz-Neuburg,  which  had  since  inherited  the 
whole  palatine  electorate,  was  to  hold  Julier  and  Berg 


106 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Charles  VI. 
and  the 
Pragmatic 
Sanction. 


\ 


until  the  extinction  of  its  male  line.  That  contingency 
was  now  in  prospect;  but  the  house  of  Pfalz-Sulzbach,  to 
whom  the  rest  of  the  inheritance  would  naturally  fall,  was 
not  minded  to  let  slip  this  fairest  part  of  it.  It  proved  in 
the  end  a  phantom  that  Frederick  William  was  chasing; 
the  last  of  the  Pfalz-Neuburgers  outlived  himself,  and  his 
son  and  successor  renounced  this  modest  prospect  in  favor 
of  larger  game.  But  it  influenced  Frederick  William’s 
attitude  at  many  an  important  crisis,  and  the  failure  of 
his  plans  and  prospects  embittered  his  last  days. 

During  the  same  period  of  time,  the  house  of  Austria  was 
chasing  a  similar  phantom,  in  its  desire  to  secure  the  recog¬ 
nition  of  all  Europe  for  its  so-called  Pragmatic  Sanction. 
The  difference  is  that  the  pursuit  of  his  dream  only  acted 
on  Frederick  William  as  an  incentive  to  strengthen  and 
unify  his  state,  whereas  Charles  VI.  neglected  everything 
save  the  one  matter  in  hand.  With  a  heavy  heart  this 
prince  had  left  Spain  on  the  death  of  his  brother  Joseph,  in 
1711.  He  loved  the  stiff  Spanish  ceremonial,  he  delighted 
in  being  knelt  to  and  treated  like  a  demigod,  and  he  is  said 
once  to  have  remarked  that  when  he  died  the  word  “  Bar¬ 
celona”  would  be  found  engraved  upon  his  heart.  He 
had  fondly  hoped  that  he  might  be  allowed  to  keep  both 
the  Spanish  and  the  imperial  crown,  but  that  delusion  had 
been  destroyed  by  the  peace  of  Utrecht.  On  the  whole,  he 
had  not  proved  a  bad  emperor;  but  he  possessed  the  tradi¬ 
tional  faults  of  his  race,  was  weak  and  vacillating  and 
afraid  to  speak  his  mind,  conferring  even  with  his  own 
ministers  by  letter  and  not  by  word  of  mouth.  He  squan¬ 
dered  his  resources  right  and  left,  and  never  looked  at  his 
household  accounts,  which,  after  his  death,  were  found  to 
be  full  of  imaginary  items :  twelve  buckets  of  the  best 
wine  for  the  empress’s  bath ;  two  casks  of  old  Tokay  for 
her  Majesty’s  parrots,  and  more  of  the  kind. 


THE  FATHER  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  107 


Given  such  an  unpractical  character,  it  is  easy  to  under¬ 
stand  how  Charles  could  waste  his  life  in  seeking  to  gain 
written  guarantees  for  his  pet  project,  instead,  as  Prince 
Eugene  advised  him,  of  seeking  the  best  of  all  guarantees 
in  a  strong  and  efficient  army  and  a  well-filled  treasury. 

His  aim  was  on  the  whole  a  just  one,  — to  prevent  the  sub¬ 
division  of  his  lands  at  his  death  and  to  have  them  pass  in 
their  integrity,  in  default  of  male  heirs,  to  his  eldest  living 
daughter.  This  was  the  sum  and  substance  of  the  Prag¬ 
matic  Sanction,  first  drawn  up  in  1713,  but  not  made  public 
until  1720,  when  his  only  son  had  died  and  there  seemed 
no  prospect  of  another  male  heir.  Had  he  been  contented 
with  gaining  the  acquiescence  of  his  own  dependencies, —  of 
Bohemia,  Moravia  and  Silesia ;  of  the  Tyrol,  Croatia,  and 
Transylvania;  of  Hungary,  and  the  former  Spanish  Nether¬ 
lands,  —  one  could  only  have  looked  on  the  Sanction  as  a 
great  gain  for  Austria ;  for,  in  the  years  that  followed,  all 
these  different  states  fully  accustomed  themselves  to  the  idea 
of  having  Maria  Theresa  as  their  future  ruler.  But  when 
Charles  began  to  beg  at  the  door  of  every  government  in 
Europe,  when  he  made  and  broke  treaties,  sacrificed  com¬ 
mercial  interests,  and  engaged  in  war  as  a  mere  act  of 
servility,  then  his  policy  became  suicidal. 

With  Frederick  William,  Charles  VI. ’s  relations  went  Suspicions 
through  extraordinary  phases.  One  can  imagine  the  king’s  against 
feelings  when,  in  1718,  a  secret  political  agent  by  the  name  Austria* 
of  Clement  laid  before  him  what  appeared  to  be  conclusive 
proofs  of  a  dastardly  plot,  on  the  part  of  Austria  and 
Saxony,  to  fall  upon  him  in  Wusterhausen  and  carry  him 
off  to  Vienna.  The  crown  prince,  too,  the  future  Fred¬ 
erick  the  Great,  was  to  be  seized  and  brought  up  as  a 
Roman  Catholic ;  while  the  royal  treasure  in  Berlin  was  to 
be  laid  hold  of  and  carried  away.  The  whole  conspiracy 
was  a  fiction  of  Clement’s,  who  hoped  to  extort  money  for 


108 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


his  revelations  ;  but  the  manuscripts  were  so  well  forged 
that  Frederick  William  was  completely  duped.  Even  after 
Clement  had  confessed  his  share  in  the  matter,  the  poor 
king  could  not  be  convinced  of  its  entire  groundlessness. 
Prince  Eugene  had  been  mentioned  as  one  of  the  conspir¬ 
ators ;  to  sound  him,  Frederick  William  sent  a  special 
envoy  to  Vienna.  “  I  am  head  of  the  imperial  army,  not 
a  chief  of  bandits,”  was  the  great  leader’s  exclamation  on 
perceiving  the  drift  of  the  envoy’s  words ;  though  the  future 
was  to  show  that  Eugene  could  condescend  to  leave  his 
pedestal.  Clement  was  sentenced  and  hung;  but  with 
Frederick  William  the  wound  remained  behind.  He  veered 
round  to  Austria’s  enemies,  concluded  the  treaty  of  Her- 
renhausen  with  England;  and,  even  after  he  had  returned 
to  his  allegiance  and  signed  the  treaties  of  Wusterhausen 
and  Berlin,  great  efforts  were  needed  to  keep  him  in  the 
toils  and  to  ward  off  the  English  influences. 

Grumbkow  Now  began  a  game  of  deceit  and  intrigue  which  lasted 

and  for  several  }^ears,  and  which  finds  no  parallel  in  history. 

Seckendoif.  -yyere  ^  not  f0r  the  evidence  of  his  own  letters  one  would 
never  believe  that  a  man  like  Eugene  of  Savoy,  who  man¬ 
aged  this  affair  in  Vienna,  could  have  lowered  himself  to 
such  depths.  Count  Seckendorf,  whom  Frederick  William 
had  known  and  liked  since  the  days  of  Malplaquet,  was 
sent  to  Berlin  as  a  sort  of  perpetual  envoy,  and  was  given 
funds  with  which  to  bribe  the  king’s  councillors  and 
attendants.  He  kept  strict  account  of  his  outlays  and  laid 
each  item  before  Eugene  :  a  yearly  pension  to  Grumbkow, 
xwhose  voice  had  more  weight  than  any  other  at  the  Prussian 
court ;  the  same  to  the  minister  resident  in  London,  and  to 
the  Saxon  envoy  at  Berlin.  The  sums  descend  to  mere 
pourboires  to  the  servants,  and  later  even  Wilhelmine  and 
the  crown  prince  were  supplied  with  pocket-money.  Seck¬ 
endorf  was  a  man  of  consummate  ability,  and,  save  where 


THE  FATHER  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  109 


his  main  object  was  concerned,  neither  bad  nor  cruel.  He 
became  a  constant  member  of  Frederick  William’s  famous 
tobacco  parliament,  where,  to  an  accompaniment  of  drink¬ 
ing  and  rude  practical  joking,  affairs  of  great  seriousness 
were  often  discussed  and  decided.  Grumbkow  was  another 
member,  not  utterly  a  villain  either ;  but  his  soul  belonged 
to  Seckendorf.  The  two  watched  their  prey  with  feline 
eagerness.  He  has  not  much  time,  Seckendorf  writes  to 
Eugene,  to  attend  to  other  matters,  “  for  one  is  obliged  to 
be  in  the  king’s  company  from  ten  in  the  morning  till 
eleven  or  twelve  at  night,  in  order  not  to  lose  the  chances 
of  insinuating  into  his  mind  what  is  right  and  proper.” 

Every  now  and  then  he  enlarges  his  sphere  of  bribery ;  he 
writes  to  the  Chancellor  Sinzendorf  that  his  next  batch  of 
supplies  must  include  “some  big  useless  giants  or  other 
baggage  of  the  kind  .  .  .  since  from  Moscow,  England, 

:feance,  Denmark,  and  Sweden  the  king’s  good  will  has 
Jifien  secured  in  this  way.”  A  medal  must  be  sent  to  the 
^learned  Gundling,  who,  though  nothing  but  a  court  fool,  is 
•^ways  with  the  king  and  is  apt  u  to  instil  false  principles.” 

TFmust  not  be  supposed  that  Seckendorf  spent  his  time  Sophie 
CIU  fighting  mere  phantoms  of  his  imagination ;  he  had  a  Dorothea, 
constant  and  determined  enemy  in  the  queen, — “  My  face,” 

3Te  writes,  “  is  so  hateful  to  her  that  she  will  hardly  answer 
me  at  table,” — and  a  cause  and  aim,  in  preventing  the  plan 
of  an  alliance  by  marriage  with  England,  which  would 
have  given  Prussia  a  natural  place  among  the  enemies  of 
Austria.  Sophie  Dorothea  was  a  strong-minded,  domineer¬ 
ing  woman,  greatly  embittered  at  not  being  allowed  to 
make  the  display  and  to  play  the  r61e  in  the  world  for  which 
her  early  training  at  the  Hanoverian  court  had  so  well 
prepared  her.  The  foreign  ambassadors  at  Berlin  call  her 
“  Olympia,”  in  their  reports,  because  of  her  high  and  mighty 
bearing.  She  is  responsible,  in  the  last  resort,  for  much  of 


110 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  double- 

marriage 

project. 


the  misery  in  the  royal  household,  setting  herself  like  a 
wall  of  iron  against  some  of  her  husband’s  projects,  and, 
worst  of  all,  estranging  from  him  the  hearts  of  his  children. 
Well  might  her  great  son  later  set  down  his  foot  and  de¬ 
clare,  that  with  his  politics  women  should  have  absolutely 
nothing  to  do. 

The  great  double-marriage  project,  by  which  Wilhelmine 
was  to  become  Princess  of  Wales,  and  the  English  Amalia 
Crown  Princess  of  Prussia,  was  first  seriously  considered  in 
1725,  at  the  time  of  the  treaty  of  Herrenhausen.  Through 
evil  and  through  good  days  the  queen  could  never  let  it  out 
of  her  mind,  and  there  were  times  when  even  Frederick 
William  looked  upon  it  with  favor.  But  George  the  First 
he  had  mildly  disliked,  and  George  the  Second  he  utterly 
despised.  Points  of  difference  would  come  up,  occasionally, 
which  would  render  the  mere  thought  of  a  union  absolutely 
abhorrent :  a  dispute  over  the  will  of  the  unfortunate  cap¬ 
tive  of  Ahlden,  who  was  the  mother  of  Sophie  Dorothea 
as  well  as  of  George  II.,  and  who  died  in  1726  ;  a  quarrel  as 
to  the  Prussian-Hanoverian  boundaries  ;  a  refusal  to  allow 
Hanover  to  be  a  happy  hunting-ground  for  Prussian  re¬ 
cruiting  officers.  Things  had  come  once  to  the  very  verge 
of  war,  and  once  to  a  challenge  for  a  personal  duel.  After 
this  great  outburst  in  1729,  the  atmosphere  suddenly  cleared, 
and  a  message  of  the  queen  to  London  led  to  the  sending 
of  a  special  envoy,  Sir  Charles  Hotham,  with  conciliatory 
proposals  and  with  power  to  arrange  the  two  contracts  of 
marriage — the  two,  but  on  no  account  either  one  singly. 
Frederick  William  was  ready  enough  to  have  Wilhelmine 
marry  the  Prince  of  Wales,  but  Hotham’s  proposition  that 
Frederick  should  wed  Amalia,  and  be  made  stadtholder  of 
Hanover,  filled  him  with  alarm ;  he  feared  the  luxury  and 
the  laxness  of  the  Hanoverian  court,  and  mistrusted  with 
good  cause  the  steadfastness  of  the  crown  prince.  And 


THE  FATHER  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  111 


Grumbkow  and  Seckendorf  had  been  working  on  him  to 
good  effect,  moving  heaven  and  earth  against  the  English 
party.  England  wished  to  make  a  cat’s-paw  of  him,  they 
said;  and  of  all  things  on  earth  that  was  what  Frederick 
William  most  dreaded.  At  last,  after  weeks  of  deliberation, 
he  answered  Hotham  that  he  considered  himself  honored 
by  the  prospect  of  Wilhelmine’s  marriage,  but  that  Frederick 
was  too  young  ;  in  ten  years  he  should  like  above  all  things 
to  have  him  wed  an  English  princess. 

So  far  the  relations  with  Hotham  had  been  all  that  could 
be  desired  ;  although  nothing  was  decided,  and  it  was  not 
likely  that  England  would  accept  these  last  proposals,  the 
door  was  still  open  for  further  negotiations.  But,  in  the 
moment  of  taking  leave,  Hotham  produced  an  intercepted 
letter  of  Grumbkow’s  tending  to  prove  that  the  latter  was 
an  Austrian  spy.  Then  Frederick  William  boiled  over  with 
rage,  threw  the  letter  on  the  ground  with  a  forcible  ex¬ 
pletive,  and  declared  that  he  had  had  enough  of  such 
interference.  Out  of  the  personal  discourtesy,  for  which 
the  king  tried  to  atone  by  inviting  him  to  dinner,  Hotham 
made  a  great  affair  of  state  and  departed  abruptly  from 
Berlin.  Conciliatory  conduct  on  Frederick  William’s  part 
might  still  have  bridged  matters ;  it  was  not  as  though  the 
letter  he  had  so  scorned  had  been  a  communication  from 
the  English  court.  But  just  at  this  time  a  long-ripening 
tragedy  in  his  own  household,  in  which  England  played 
a  part,  came  to  its  climax,  and  cast  a  never-to-be-lifted 
shadow  on  the  whole  double-marriage  project. 

Frederick  William’s  relations  to  his  eldest  son  form  an 
important  chapter  in  Prussian  history ;  it  is  not  too  much 
to  say  that  to  the  harsh  discipline  of  his  youth  Frederick 
owed  much  of  his  later  greatness.  He  learned  reticence 
and  self-command,  he  was  forced  to  apply  himself  diligently 
to  tasks  which  he  at  first  despised ;  but  above  all,  he  learned 


The  insult 
to  Hotham. 


The  an¬ 
tipathy  of 
father  and 
son. 


112 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Iniquities 
of  the 
crown 
prince. 


to  admire  and  to  follow  a  system  which  originally  seemed 
to  him  wrong.  His  directions  for  the  education  of  his  suc¬ 
cessor  are  not  so  different  from  those  given  by  his  own 
father ;  many  a  curb  at  which  he  himself  had  chafed,  which 
he  even  at  the  time  had  declared  intolerable,  was  retained 
in  all  its  force. 

It  is  a  mistake  to  attribute  Frederick  William’s  harshness 
to  a  mere  unreasoning  personal  antipathy  or,  on  the  other 
hand,  purely  to  a  contempt  for  the  finer  sides  of  life  which 
the  young  prince  loved  to  cultivate.  What  wounded  and 
terrified  the  king  was  the  thought  of  the  shipwreck  his  own 
life-work  seemed  destined  to  endure,  so  soon  as  Frederick 
should  come  to  the  throne.  We,  who  know  now  the  true 
stuff  of  which  the  latter  was  made,  are  too  apt  to  look  upon 
him  in  his  youth  as  a  misunderstood  genius,  whose  way  was 
beset  by  unnecessary  obstacles ;  as  a  matter  of  fact,  he  was 
like  a  wild  stallion,  with  everything  depending  on  the  man¬ 
ner  in  which  he  should  be  tamed  and  broken.  Without  the 
frightful  experience  at  the  window  of  the  Kiistrin  fortress, 
it  is  doubtful  if  we  should  ever  have  had  the  desperate 
fortitude  before  a  world  in  ruins  at  the  end  of  the  Seven 
Years’  War. 

On  the  whole,  it  seems  not  unlikely  that  the  un¬ 
reasoning  antipathy  had  begun  on  the  side  of  the  son. 
Frederick  William  had  at  first  fairly  sued  for  the  love  of 
this  boy;  and  we  still  have  the  instructions  providing  that 
in  his  childish  delinquencies  the  latter  should  always  be 
threatened  with  the  wrath  of  his  mother,  never  of  his 
father.  In  all  the  king’s  plans  for  the  improvement  of  the 
state,  the  thought  of  “Fritz”  was  paramount;  his  son  at 
his  death  must  find  whole  vaults  of  gold  in  the  treasury, 
he  once  said.  There  were  times  when,  for  hours  snatched 
from  his  toilsome  days,  he  devoted  himself  personally  to 
the  child’s  education ;  his  threefold  aim  was  to  make  him 
a  good  manager,  a  good  soldier,  and  a  good  Christian. 


THE  FATHER  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  113 


But  the  pupil  proved  ‘singularly  refractory.  Was  it  that 
the  blood  of  the  Georges  was  struggling  for  the  mastery? 
or  was  it  that  the  carping  jealousy  of  the  mother  instilled 
a  contempt  for  all  of  the  father’s  ideals  ?  Sophie  Dorothea 
made  no  secret  of  her  dislike  for  her  husband’s  Spartan 
surroundings,  and  it  was  not  in  her  nature  to  dissimulate 
before  her  children. 

Frederick  began  to  seek  flighty  companions  of  both 
sexes,  to  commit  acts  of  vandalism,  to  make  debts,  and  to 
spend  his  money  upon  fripperies.  Strange  as  it  may  seem, 
the  future  great  commander  showed  a  detestation  for 
things  military,  and  indeed,  for  vigorous  pursuits  in  gen¬ 
eral.  When  his  father  took  him  hunting,  he  would  hide 
behind  a  tree  and  bury  himself  in  a  book.  His  greatest 
delight  was  to  put  on  gay  clothes,  to  play  the  flute,  and 
to  write  satirical  French  verses.  He  once  spoke  of  his 
soldier’s  uniform  as  a  shroud,  and  Frederick  William  retali¬ 
ated  by  burning  one  of  his  gaudy  dressing-gowns.  But 
what  most  angered  the  father  was  a  want  of  frankness,  a 
tendency  to  conceal  the  true  extent  even  of  a  half-dis¬ 
covered  offence.  Once  by  a  public  show  of  affection  he 
fairly  delighted  the  king.  “  That  is  good,”  the  latter  said, 
as  he  stroked  the  lad’s  hand,  “  only  be  an  upright  fellow, 
only  be  upright.”  Yet  soon  he  had  cause  to  think  that 
during  the  whole  scene  Frederick  had  been  playing  him  a 
comedy,  and  all  the  harshness  of  his  nature  rose  in  revolt. 

One  further  point  must  be  taken  into  consideration  Severity  to 
before  joining  in  the  unqualified  condemnation  to  which  tlie  crown 
Frederick  William  has  too  often  been  subjected  in  this  prince' 
matter.  There  was  a  certain  purpose  and  policy  even  in 
the  king’s  acts  of  most  outrageous  violence.  “  I  have  done 
everything  in  the  world,”  he  said,  in  one  of  the  most  affect¬ 
ing  moments  of  their  common  lives,  “  by  good  means  and 
by  bad,  to  make  you  an  honest  man.” 

VOL.  II —  I 


114 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  at¬ 
tempt  at 
flight. 


Yet  with  all  that  can  be  said  on  the  other  side,  enough  re¬ 
mains  in  the  prince’s  favor  to  insure  him,  for  all  time,  a 
goodly  meed  of  the  world’s  sympathy.  The  father’s  tongue 
was  a  stinging  lash ;  there  were  times  when  even  the  most 
harmless  incidents  were  interpreted  to  the  disfavor  of  the 
“  evil  wight  ”  ;  there  were  terrible  moments,  such  as  the  one 
on  the  parade  ground  at  Potsdam,  where  the  boy  was  buffeted 
and  caned  and  forced  to  walk  off  with  soiled  garments  and 
dishevelled  hair  before  the  eyes  of  the  common  soldiers. 
The  same  scene  was  reenacted  in  the  camp  at  Miihlberg 
during  the  splendid  festivities  at  which  the  pair  were  the 
guests  of  the  king  of  Poland ;  and  from  that  time  on,  the 
plan  of  flight  was  never  absent  from  Frederick’s  mind. 
Who  can  blame  him  for  not  weighing  carefully  the  conse¬ 
quences  of  such  a  move,  for  choosing  ways  and  means  that 
bordered  on  high  treason,  and  even  for  involving  others  in 
a  ruin  that  in  calmer  moments  he  would  have  seen  to  be 
inevitable  ?  Desertion  and  abetting  desertion  were  crimes 
which  the  codes  of  all  Europe  in  the  eighteenth  century 
punished  with  death,  and  when  had  Frederick  William 
been  known  to  show  mercy  in  such  a  case  ? 

Immeasurably,  beyond  a  doubt,  did  the  crown  prince 
aggravate  his  offence  by  his  dealings  with  England.  In 
the  face  of  his  father’s  refusal  to  hear  any  more  of  the 
double  marriage,  he  had  written  to  London,  with  his 
mother’s  connivance,  to  protest  that,  so  long  as  he  lived, 
he  would  take  no  other  wife  than  the  Princess  Amalia ;  he 
had  sought  to  gain  a  promise  from  the  envoy  in  Berlin 
that  England  would  grant  him  an  asylum  should  he  flee 
from  his  father’s  court,  and  had  negotiated  for  the  pay¬ 
ment  of  his  debts  by  George  II.,  placing  the  sum  many 
thousand  thalers  too  high,  that  he  might  have  funds  for  his 
undertaking. 

“In  your  blind  obstinacy  you  thought  to  escape  me,” 


THE  FATHER  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


115 


Frederick  William  said,  long  after  the  catastrophe,  to  his 
son ;  “  but  listen,  my  good  fellow,  if  you  were  to  live  to  be 
sixty  or  seventy,  you  would  not  get  the  better  of  me. 
Bis  dato ,  up  to  date,  I  have  held  my  own  against  every 
one  !  ”  Suspecting  Frederick’s  intention,  he  surrounded 
him  with  watchful  guardians,  bound,  under  peril  of  their 
lives,  to  cut  off  the  first  attempt  at  flight.  The  golden  op¬ 
portunity  seemed  to  have  come  when,  on  a  journey  through 
the  empire,  but  a  few  hours’  ride  intervened  between  the 
camp  near  Mannheim  and  the  French  frontier ;  but  in  the 
faint  glimmering  of  that  August  dawn  in  which  Frederick 
awaited  the  page,  Keith,  with  his  horses — Lieutenant  Catte, 
in  Berlin,  having  agreed  to  meet  him  in  the  Hague,  with 
his  papers  and  other  valuables, — he  came  face  to  face  with 
Colonel  Rochow,  his  warden-in-chief.  The  latter  would 
not  have  betrayed  him,  but  Keith,  in  an  agony  of  repent¬ 
ance,  confessed  all  to  the  king.  Rochow  was  ordered  to 
bring  the  prince,  living  or  dead,  within  the  limits  of  Prus¬ 
sian  territory.  Frederick  was  slow  in  realizing  the  future 
that  awaited  him ;  to  the  commissioners  sent  to  examine 
him  he  kept  saying  mockingly,  “  Is  there  anything  else  you 
would  like  to  know?  ”  Only  gradually,  too,  did  Frederick 
William  come  to  see  the  true  bearing  of  the  case.  “  I 
thought  you  were  in  Paris,”  was  his  caustic  remark  at  the 
first  sight  of  the  would-be  fugitive ;  but  each  new  tidings 
filled  him  with  greater  alarm.  The  dealings  with  England 
seemed  to  him  particularly  heinous  because  of  the  conse¬ 
quences  that  would  have  been  involved  had  Frederick’s 
request  for  asylum  been  granted.  “  I  should  have  invaded 
Hanover,”  he  said  later,  “and  burnt  and  devastated  every¬ 
thing,  even  though  it  had  cost  me  my  life,  my  land, 
and  my  people.” 

That  Frederick  William  ever  thought  seriously  of  put¬ 
ting  his  son  to  death  is  not  likely ;  yet  the  queen  feared 


116 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


In  fear  of 
the  death 
sentence. 


The  execu¬ 
tion  of 
Catte. 


the  worst,  and  bent  her  pride  to  the  extent  of  entreating 
her  old  enemy,  Seckendorf,  to  obtain  from  the  emperor  a 
letter  of  intercession.  And  Frederick  himself  could  scarcely 
be  persuaded  that  a  clergyman  who  visited  him  in  his 
prison  at  Kiistrin,  was  not  there  for  the  purpose  of  prepar¬ 
ing  him  for  his  last  hour.  At  the  best,  he  could  hardly 
have  hoped,  now,  ever  to  succeed  to  the  throne  ;  he  had  been 
repeatedly  interrogated  as  to  whether,  from  a  sense  of  his 
own  unworthiness,  he  would  not  resign  his  claims. 

As  for  the  king,  it  must  be  said  that  there  was  nothing 
in  his  conduct,  at  this  juncture,  of  blind  rage  or  vindictive¬ 
ness.  He  himself  suffered  intensely,  and  at  night  walked 
the  floor  in  sleepless  wretchedness,  wrestling  with  the  prob¬ 
lem  of  how  to  make  his  son  ein  honnete  homme.  He  felt 
that  the  mocking  spirit,  of  which  Frederick  was  even  yet 
possessed,  must  be  subdued  at  any  cost,  and  a  sense  borne 
in  upon  him  of  the  earnestness  of  life.  The  boy  needed, 
Frederick  William  wrote  a  little  later  to  Leopold  of  Dessau, 
to  have  a  taste  of  real  danger,  to  perform  reconnoitring  duty 
where  war  was  going  on,  to  work  in  trenches  or  on  re¬ 
doubts  :  “  Should  he  do  this  with  a  good  grace  and  remain 
steadfast,  I  would  pardon  him  fully,”  he  said. 

As  a  present  means  of  discipline,  the  king  contrived  an 
ordeal,  compared  to  which  any  conceivable  danger  in  the 
field  must  have  seemed  a  welcome  alternative.  The  cases 
of  all  persons  directly  concerned  in  the  plan  of  flight  had 
been  submitted  to  a  court-martial  of  higher  officers.  They 
had  pronounced  the  heir  to  the  throne  beyond  their  juris¬ 
diction,  but  had  sentenced  Lieutenant  Catte  to  life-long 
imprisonment.  This  verdict  Frederick  William  changed, 
with  full  right  as  chief  justice  of  his  land,  to  death  on  the 
scaffold.  To  Catte  he  sent  expressions  of  regret,  but  de¬ 
clared  it  better  that  he  should  die,  than  that  justice  should 
perish  in  the  land.  Then  came  the  day  when  the  young 


THE  FATHER  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  117 

Frederick  was  informed  that  in  two  hours  his  friend  must 
be  beheaded  before  his  own  eyes.  “  What  awful  news  is 
this  you  bring?”  he  cried;  “Lord  Jesus,  rather  take  my 
own  life  !  ”  But  no  one  listened  to  his  prayers,  and  soon 
the  gloomy  procession  turned  the  angle  of  the  fortress  wall. 

The  escort  drew  up  in  a  circle  with  Catte  in  their  midst, 
and  Frederick  had  only  time  to  rush  to  the  window  and 
throw  a  despairing  cry  for  pardon  to  his  unfortunate  accom¬ 
plice.  The  latter,  full  of  love  and  devotion  to  his  prince, 
answered  that  he  had  nothing  to  forgive  ;  later  a  writing  of 
his  was  brought  to  Frederick  in  which  the  latter  was  urged 
to  give  his  heart  to  God  and  not  to  bear  malice  against  the 
king.  As  the  blow  fell,  the  prince  lost  consciousness,  then 
stood  for  hours  with  his  eyes  glued  to  Catte’s  corpse,  which 
Frederick  William,  as  an  aggravation  of  the  punishment, 
had  ordered  to  be  left  where  it  fell,  from  eight  in  the  morn¬ 
ing  until  two  o’clock  in  the  afternoon.1 

It  speaks  well  for  the  penetration  of  Frederick  William  Thediscb 
that  not  only  did  his  rough  experiment  do  Frederick  no  Plme  at 
harm,  but  that  it  really  seemed  to  strengthen  and  steady  his 
character.  The  same  may  be  said,  in  a  still  higher  degree, 
of  the  year  of  probation  that  the  prince  was  obliged  to 
pass  through  in  order  to  regain  his  father’s  favor.  “  The 
school  of  misfortune,”  he  once  himself  declared,  “makes 
one  circumspect,  discreet,  and  sympathetic.  One  carefully 
weighs  the  possible  consequences  of  each  smallest  step.” 

Three  days  after  Catte’s  execution,  Frederick  was  given 
the  freedom  of  the  fortress  and  town  of  Kiistrin ;  but  was 
not  to  be  saluted  by  the  guards,  nor  even  by  the  officers 
of  the  garrison.  He  was  to  work  daily  in  the  War  and 
Domain  office  as  Auscultator  or  assistant  clerk,  the  king 
commanding  that  “on  a  lower  level  there  should  be  placed 

1  “  Cruel  as  the  grinding  of  human  hearts  under  millstones,”  writes 
Carlyle  of  this  episode,  “  but  was  it  only  that  ?  ” 


118 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  restora¬ 
tion  to 
favor. 


for  him  a  little  table  and  a  chair,  and  on  the  table  ink,  pen, 
and  paper.”  Here,  month  after  month,  the  prince  worked 
not  only  faithfully  but  cheerfully ;  learning  the  lesson  of 
governing  in  all  its  smallest  details,  and  often  luring  a 
smile  from  the  friendly  judges  and  councillors  by  the  wit 
that  would  flash  out  from  his  legal  reports.  He  bore  no 
malice  to  any  one,  and,  strange  to  say,  Grumbkow,  whose 
machinations  against  the  English  marriage  had  largely 
contributed  to  his  misfortunes,  became,  to  all  outward 
appearances,  his  warmest  friend.  The  king  persistently 
refused  to  see  him,  or  to  grant  him  the  right  to  wear  his 
uniform.  “  Had  I  done  what  he  has,”  Frederick  William 
wrote  to  Wolden,  the  young  man’s  special  mentor  and 
guardian,  “I  should  be  filled  with  a  deadly  shame,  and 
never  allow  myself  to  be  seen  at  all.” 

But  at  last  Wolden  received  a  message  to  say  that  the 
king  was  coming  to  see  the  culprit.  “  So  soon  as  I  look 
him  in  the  eyes,”  he  declared,  “  I  shall  know  whether  or 
not  he  has  really  improved.”  On  the  day  of  the  visit  — 
we  have  Grumbkow’s  protocol  of  all  that  took  place — - 
Frederick  was  called  to  strict  account  for  every  one  of  his 
past  sins ;  but  his  eyes  told  the  tale  that  his  father  wished 
to  read.  Frederick  William  began  to  relent,  and  the 
interview  at  last  grew  extremely  affecting.  The  king 
ended  up  with  a  declaration  of  forgiveness,  and  Frederick, 
dissolved  in  tears,  knelt  and  kissed  his  feet.  Then,  as 
Frederick  William  was  about  to  enter  his  carriage,  he  turned, 
and  embraced  his  son  before  the  eyes  of  an  eager  throng. 
“I  never  believed  before,”  said  Frederick,  when  he  was 
gone,  “  that  my  father  cherished  for  me  the  least  spark  of 
affection.”  A  few  weeks  later  came  another  affecting  scene 
in  the  ball  room  of  the  Berlin  castle,  where  the  king,  who 
had  arranged  that  the  crown  prince’s  coming  sho  'Id  be  a 
complete  surprise,  led  him  by  the  hand  through  thf  wded 


THE  FATHER  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  119 


hall  straight  to  the  queen,  “  See,  madam,  here  is  our  Fritz 
again !  ”  Soon  afterward,  on  petition  of  all  the  generals 
who  were  present  in  Berlin,  he  was  reinstated  in  the  army, 
and  promised  the  command  of  a  regiment  in  Ruppin. 

Even  now  it  was  only  by  walking  the  narrowest  of  paths 
that  he  could  keep  his  father’s  favor.  He  often  fretted 
and  chafed,  and  once,  on  the  occasion  of  the  king’s  illness, 
wrote  ugly  words  to  his  sister  to  the  effect  that  “  the  Turk  ” 
had  no  intention  of  dying.  But  he  had  learned  to  bow  to 
a  will  that  was  stronger  than  his  own,  and  he  thought  no 
more  of  open  insubordination,  —  not  even  when  a  question 
arose  which  concerned  nobody  so  much  as  himself,  affecting 
as  it  did  his  whole  future.  The  crown  prince’s  dealings 
with  England  had  put  a  final  end,  in  Frederick  William’s 
mind  at  least,  to  the  double-marriage  project.  “  In  all  my 
days,  neither  single  nor  double,”  he  declared ;  “  I  will  not 
have  their  princesses  in  my  house,  nor  will  I  give  them  one 
of  mine,  even  under  the  best  of  conditions.”  The  outcry 
over  Catte’s  judgment  and  execution  had  widened  the 
breach.  “  Had  I  a  hundred  thousand  such  Cattes  I  would 
behead  them  all  together,”  was  the  message  he  sent  to  the 
English  people  through  his  ambassador.  He  meant,  he  said, 
to  souteniren  himself  as  Herr  despotique ,  and  the  English 
were  to  know  that  he  would  suffer  no  co-regent  at  his  side. 

The  men  who  had  most  reason  to  rejoice  at  this  attitude  The  forced 
were  Seckendorf  and  Grumbkow.  Fully  in  possession  of  marriage, 
the  ear  of  the  king,  they  now  arranged  a  marriage  between 
Frederick  and  the  Princess  Elizabeth  Christine  of  Bruns- 
wick-Bevern,  a  niece  of  the  empress.  Grumbkow,  for 
his  services  in  the  matter,  received  a  present  of  forty 
thousand  guldens,  in  addition  to  his  yearly  stipend,  from 
the  Austrian  court :  “  for  if  ever  any  one  in  the  world  de¬ 
serves  favors,  it  is  this  man,”  wrote  Seckendorf  to  Vienna. 

It  mattered  little  that  Elizabeth  Christine  was  person- 


120 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  futility 
of  the 
marriage. 


ally  distasteful  to  Frederick ;  lie  felt  indeed  that  any 
marriage  would  be  a  relief  from  the  strict  discipline  and 
supervision  under  which  his  father  still  kept  him ;  but  he 
declared  from  the  first  that  there  never  could  be  any  sym¬ 
pathy  between  this  woman  and  himself.  “I  pity  the  poor 
thing,”  he  wrote  to  Grumbkow,  “for  now  there  will  be  one 
more  unhappy  princess  in  the  world.”  His  letters  grew 
more  and  more  desperate.  “My  God,  is  not  one  such  case 
enough?  ”  he  cries,  referring  to  the  unfortunate  marriage  of 
his  younger  sister  with  the  Margrave  of  Ansbach.  And 
again,  “I  would  rather  marry  the  commonest  piece  of 
female  baggage  in  all  Berlin  than  this  praying  nun,  with  a 
face  like  a  half-a-dozen  flies  all  rolled  into  one.”  Finally, 
“  I  will  keep  my  word,  I  will  marry  her ;  but  then,  enough : 
Bonjour ,  Madame ,  et  bon  chemin  !  ” 

Nor  was  there  to  be  spared  to  the  young  bridegroom  the 
saddest  and  bitterest  of  all  considerations  —  the  needless¬ 
ness  of  the  whole  sacrifice.  The  marriage  had  been  brought 
about  chiefly  for  the  sake  of  Austria;  Frederick  William’s 
policy  for  years  had  been  that  of  absolute  trust  in  the  em¬ 
peror.  “  He  will  have  to  spurn  me  from  him  with  his  feet,” 
he  once  said ;  “  I  am  his  unto  death,  faithful  to  the  last  drop 
of  blood.”  But  that  spurning  process  had  already  begun. 

England’s  guarantee  of  his  Pragmatic  Sanction  had  al¬ 
ways  seemed  to  Charles  VI.  one  of  the  most  necessary  to 
obtain.  After  years  of  enmity,  he  had  achieved  his  wish,  in 
1731,  at  the  sacrifice  of  his  Ostende  Company,  Austria’s 
one  great  commercial  enterprise,  which  interfered  with  the 
English  trade  in  the  East  Indies.  Surely  complaisance  to 
a  new  ally  never  went  further  than  when  now,  just  before 
the  wedding  with  the  Prussian  crown  prince,  Seckendorf 
was  instructed  to  break  the  match  he  had  so  carefully 
arranged  and  to  bring  about  that  old,  so  often  mooted 
union  between  Frederick  and  the  English  Princess  Amalia. 


THE  FATHER  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  121 


He  received  his  instructions  and  acquitted  himself  of  his 
mission  only  twenty-four  hours  before  the  ceremony  was 
to  be  performed,  and  after  the  guests  had  already  arrived. 
Frederick  William  was  unnaturally  calm;  he  thought 
Seckendorf  must  be  dreaming,  he  said,  and  refused  utterly 
to  besmirch  his  honor  and  his  parole  by  countermanding 
the  festivities.  So  Frederick  went  to  the  altar  to  no  one’s 
benefit;  while  Frederick  William  was  hurried  along  from 
one  bitter  experience  with  Austria  to  another. 

More  and  more  it  became  evident  that  Charles  had  no  Austria’s 
intention  of  keeping  the  agreement  with  regard  to  the  treachery, 
duchy  of  Berg,  which  he  had  made  in  1728.  We  know 
now,  that  he  was  bound  by  contrary  promises  to  the  other 
party,  the  house  of  Pfalz-Sulzbach.  He  began,  soon  after 
the  entente  with  England,  to  declare  that  the  town  of  Diis- 
seldorf  must  be  excepted  in  any  case;  and  finally  tried  to 
force  Frederick  William  to  accept  the  intervention  of  a 
congress  of  nations.  This  proved  in  the  end  a  foolish  policy, 
which  freed  Prussia  from  the  trammels  of  the  Berlin  treaty. 
Frederick  William  was  deeply  pained,  too,  by  the  manner 
in  which  the  emperor  treated  his  offers  of  aid  in  the  war 
that  broke  out  with  France,  in  1735,  with  regard  to  the 
Polish  succession.  Louis  XV.  fought  for  his  son-in-law, 
Stanislaus  Lescinsky;  Austria  and  Russia  for  Augustus 
III.  of  Saxony, — who  finally  won  the  day.  But  the  cam¬ 
paign  on  the  Rhine,  though  led  by  the  old  Prince  Eugene 
with  the  young  Frederick  in  his  camp,  was  a  series  of 
wretched  blunders.  Frederick  William  would  gladly  have 
sent  fifty  thousand  men;  but  Austria  feared  that  he  would 
seize  Berg,  and  required  him  to  send  no  more  than  his 
bare  contingent.  The  emperor  made  light  in  every  way 
of  the  value  of  Prussia’s  aid.  A  common  indignation 
against  Austria  seems  to  have  broken  down  the  last  barri¬ 
ers  that  remained  between  the  father  and  son.  Frederick 


122 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


William  was  repeatedly  heard  to  remark,  “  There  stands 
one  who  will  avenge  me!”  Once  he  poured  out  in  writing 
his  wrath  at  the  emperor’s  ingratitude  and  ended  up  with, 
“The  reflections  which  must  result  from  what  I  tell  you  may 
give  you  an  opportunity  to  be  on  your  guard  in  the  future;” 
while  Frederick  himself,  as  far  back  as  1737,  prophesied,  in  a 
letter  to  Grumbkow,  that  pride  in  Austria  was  going  before 
a  fall:  “Should  the  emperor  die  to-day  or  to-morrow,  what 
changes  will  not  the  world  experience!”  “The  king  treats 
me  now  as  I  always  wished  he  would,”  writes  Frederick  in 
1739.  It  was  in  these  days  that  his  eyes  were  opened  as  to 
the  magnificent  results  achieved  by  his  father  in  the  work  of 
reclaiming  East  Prussia.  One  painful  scene  still  took  place 
when,  a  few  weeks  before  his  death,  the  old  king  was  holding 
his  tobacco  parliament,  and,  on  the  entry  of  the  crown  prince, 
every  one  in  the  room  rose  and  saluted  him.  It  had  always 
been  a  principle  that  no  ceremony  of  the  kind  should  be 
observed.  Full  of  bitterness  of  heart,  the  old  invalid  caused 
his  chair  to  be  wheeled  into  another  room,  and  sent  back 
the  command,  that  those  who  had  “  worshipped  the  rising 
sun  ”  might  disperse  to  their  homes. 

In  his  last  days  Frederick  William  summoned  strength 
to  review  for  Frederick’s  benefit  his  whole  foreign  policy, 
and  to  warn  him  against  Austria’s  invariable  efforts  to  hold 
down  Prussia.  He  had  again  grown  very  loving,  very 
tender.  Once,  in  the  presence  of  the  crown  prince,  he  turned 
to  a  number  of  officials  and  cried  out,  “  Has  not  God  shown 
me  too  much  favor  in  giving  me  so  strong  and  worthy  a 
9  ”  and  again,  locking  him  in  a  warm  embrace,  his  voice 


son 


choked  with  sobs,  “  My  God,  I  die  happy  in  leaving  so 
worthy  a  son  and  successor  !  ”  The  Nemesis  of  the  past  had 
been  propitiated,  and,  in  the  account  which  Frederick  wrote 
of  his  father’s  life,  there  is  not  a  word  of  blame  save  in  the 
one  point,  that  he  had  forced  him  into  an  unhappy  marriage. 


CHAPTER  IV 


THE  WARS  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 

Literature  :  Schaefer,  Der  siebenjahrige  Krieg,  is  still  the  great 
authority  for  the  Seven  Years’  War.  Longman,  in  the  Epoch  Series ,  is 
simply  a  condensation  of  Schaefer.  Tuttle,  Frederick  the  Great,  extends 
only  to  1757.  Koser,  Konig  Friedrich  der  Grosse,  is  also  incomplete, 
but  excellent  as  far  as  it  goes.  Koser  is  the  greatest  living  authority  on 
Frederick. 

When  first  confronted  with  the  prospect  of  his  father’s  Frederick’s 

death,  young  Frederick  of  Prussia  complained  bitterly  firm  SrasP 

that  he  was  being  thrust  out  into  the  midst  of  storm,  that  °l  the  rems 

°  of  govern- 

a  relentless  fate  was  forcing  him  to  mount  I  ortuna  s  car,  ment> 

that  the  peaceful,  pleasant,  and  industrious  days  he  had 
latterly  been  enjoying  at  Rheinsberg,  his  small  palace  near 
Ruppin,  were  at  an  end  forever.  Not  that  he  meant  to 
make  any  radical  change  in  the  system  of  administration ; 
with  the  old  king’s  methods  he  had  of  late  become  com¬ 
pletely  reconciled, — with  his  economy,  his  attention  to  de¬ 
tail,  his  diligent  care  for  the  army.  But  events  were  to 
assume  a  quicker  tempo,  the  instruments  at  hand  were 
to  find  their  use,  the  millions  lying  idle  in  the  vaults 
of  the  treasury  were  to  be  put  into  circulation,  the  ninety 
thousand  soldiers  were  to  show  of  what  deeds  and  what 

A  - 

exertions  they  were  capable.  In  his  very  first  address  to 
his  officers,  Frederick  told  them  that  their  regiments  were 
expected  to  be  useful  as  well  as  ornamental ;  immediately 
after  his  father’s  funeral  he  dismissed  the  tall,  showy  gren¬ 
adiers,  and  formed  new  regiments  of  better  and  less  costly 

material.  To  the  surprise  and  disappointment  of  many  he 

123 


124 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


TheHeristal 

matter. 


The  death 
of  the 
emperor. 


proved  as  stern,  decisive,  and  absolute  as  ever  Frederick 
William  had  been;  haughtily  reprimanded  the  Prince  of 
Anhalt,  the  “  old  Dessauer,”  who  spoke  of  “  exercising 
authority  ”  ;  and  sent  General  Schulenburg,  who  had  come 
to  Berlin  to  congratulate  him  on  his  accession,  flying 
back  to  his  regiment  with  instructions  not  to  leave  it 
again  without  permission.  Yet  Schulenburg,  if  any  one, 
deserved  well  of  his  new  master,  for  he  had  been  president 
of  that  court-martial  which  had,  eight  years  before,  firmly 
declared  the  case  of  a  crown  prince  to  be  beyond  its 
jurisdiction. 

In  the  matter  of  a  dispute  with  the  Bishop  of  Liege  con¬ 
cerning  the  little  Prussian  principality  of  Heristal,  —  a  part 
of  the  Orange  inheritance,  —  Frederick  in  these  days  called 
for  the  advice  of  his  ministers  ;  but,  angry  at  their  pacific  in¬ 
junctions,  and  at  their  evident  awe  of  the  Emperor  Charles 
VI.,  who  was  ready  to  take  the  bishop’s  part,  he  wrote  on 
the  edge  of  their  formal  report :  “  When  the  ministers  talk 
politics  they  are  clever  men,  but  their  ideas  on  war  are  like 
the  opinions  of  an  Iroquois  on  the  subject  of  astronomy.” 
By  marching  three  battalions  of  grenadiers  and  a  squadron 
of  dragoons  into  the  bishop’s  territory  he  brought  the  latter 
to  terms ;  while  Charles  VI.,  struck  by  the  young  king’s 
perfectly  fearless  attitude,  thought  best  to  suppress  a  de- 
hortatorium ,  or  formal  admonition,  that  was  already  under 
way.  Podewils,  Frederick’s  minister  of  foreign  affairs, 
declared  to  Charles’s  envoy,  that  his  master  considered 
himself  fully  on  an  equality  with  his  Imperial  Majesty,  who, 
he  would  have  him  understand,  was  onl  j  primus  inter  pares. 

A  few  weeks  later,  while  Frederick  himself  was  lying 
sick  of  a  fever,  a  messenger  brought  the  news  of  Charles’s 
sudden  death.  The  very  same  day  Frederick  wrote  to 
Voltaire :  “  The  time  has  come  for  an  entire  change  in  the 
old  political  system,  the  stone  has  again  broken  loose  which 


THE  WARS  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


125 


once  descended  on  the  four-metalled  image  of  Nebuchad¬ 
nezzar  and  destroyed  it  utterly.  ...  I  have  cast  off  my 
fever  [with  the  aid  of  quinine,  which  had  hitherto  been 
considered  too  dangerous  a  remedy],  for  I  shall  need  to  put 
my  body  to  every  conceivable  use.”  Yet,  as  Frederick 
said  himself  two  days  later,  there  was  no  reason  why  a 
bagatelle  like  the  death  of  the  emperor  should  greatly 
excite  him ;  u  It  is  only  a  matter  of  carrying  out  plans 
which  I  have  long  had  in  my  head.” 

Almost  immediately,  the  army  was  commanded  to  hold 
itself  in  readiness ;  by  November  15,  Frederick  was  able  to 
write  from  Rheinsberg  to  his  minister,  that  he  had  given 
his  Berlin  regiments  a  false  order  of  march  in  order  to 
throw  the  “tattlers  ”  off  the  scent,  and  that  Podewils  must 
keep  his  eyes  open.  “If  heaven  is  not  absolutely  against 
us,  we  have  the  finest  game  in  the  world.  ...  I  think  of 
striking  my  blow  on  the  8th  of  December,  and  thus  inaugu¬ 
rating  the  boldest,  most  rapid,  and  grandest  undertaking 
in  which  a  prince  of  my  house  has  ever  been  engaged.” 

To  the  last  moment  Frederick  kept  his  plans  secret. 
First  at  Rheinsberg,  then  at  Berlin,  he  filled  the  palace 
with  guests,  for  whom  he  arranged  comedies  and  balls.  The 
very  evening  before  his  departure  for  the  army,  was  filled 
till  far  into  the  night  with  a  double  entertainment  —  a  mas¬ 
querade  and  a  supper.  The  next  morning  at  nine  he 
mounted  his  coach  and  drove  off  to  Frankfort-on-the-Oder, 
and  three  days  later  wrote  to  Podewils:  “I  have  crossed 
the  Rubicon  with  banners  waving  and  to  the  sound  of 
trumpets ;  my  troops  show  the  best  of  wills,  the  officers 
are  full  of  ambition,  and  the  commanders  thirst  for  fame. 
.  .  .  Either  I  die  or  I  reap  honor  from  this  enterprise.” 
To  Jordan  he  wrote:  “Be  my  Cicero  and  show  the  justice 
of  my  cause.  I  will  be  thy  Csesar  and  carry  the  matter 
through.” 


The 

descent  on 
Silesia. 


126 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Ground  for 
the  claim 
to  Silesia. 


No  act  in  history  has  been  more  variously  judged  than 
the  sudden  descent  of  the  Prussian  king  on  the  Austrian 
province  of  Silesia;  apologists  and  accusers  at  once  sprang 
up,  and  the  dispute  thus  inaugurated  never  has  been,  and 
never  can  be,  entirely  laid  at  rest.  Undoubtedly,  it  was 
barbarous  practice  to  thus  invade  a  friendly  country  with¬ 
out  so  much  as  a  declaration  of  war,  unchivalrous  conduct 
for  a  strong  king  to  throw  down  the  gauntlet  to  a  young 
queen  struggling,  in  the  midst  of  bereavement,  to  maintain 
her  endangered  inheritance ;  and  all  this  out  of  motives  in 
which,  as  Frederick  confessed  himself,  ambition  and  the 
“desire  to  make  a  name  ”  played  a  conspicuous- part.  On 
the  other  hand,  Frederick  had  long  known  that  the  death 
of  the  last  male  Austrian  Hapsburg  would  be  the  inevi¬ 
table  signal  for  just  such  a  struggle  as  had  followed  on 
the  extinction  of  the  Spanish  line.  In  spite  of  the  Prag¬ 
matic  Sanction,  the  succession  of  a  woman  was  likely  to 
be  disputed  by  no  less  than  four  rulers :  by  the  kings  of 
Spain,  Sardinia,  and  Poland,  and  the  elector  of  Bavaria. 
Frederick’s  own  house  had  claims  against  the  greater  part 
of  Silesia,  which  had  been  hoarded  up  for  three  genera¬ 
tions  against  this  very  day;  the  old  Chancellor  von  Lude- 
wig,  in  Halle,  had  for  forty  years  been  collecting  proofs 
on  the  Prussian  side,  while,  before  him,  Ilgen,  minister 
to  the  Great  Elector,  had  warned  his  master  to  be  on  the 
lookout  for  a  favorable  opportunity.  A  plan  for  the  con¬ 
quest  of  Silesia  had  been  drawn  up  at  that  time ;  it  was 
once  shown  to  Frederick  William  I.,  who  declared  that  it 
was  worth  to  him  a  hundred  thousand  thalers;  its  exist¬ 
ence  was  well  known  to  the  young  Frederick. 

There  is  no  need  here  to  recapitulate  the  grounds  upon 
which  Prussia  based  her  claims;  even  Austria^had,  to 
some  extent,  acknowledged  their  justice  by  agreeing, 
before  the  Great  Elector’s  death,  to  give  up  Schwiebus  in 


THE  WARS  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


127 


return  for  a  safe  title  to  Brieg,  Liegnitz,  Wohlau,  and 
Jagerndorf.  It  is  true  the  emperor  had  stipulated  in 
secret,  with  the  then  electoral  prince,  that  Schwiebus 
should  be  returned  to  him  without  equivalent  so  soon  as 
the  old  elector  died;  but  Frederick  I.,  when  later  fulfill¬ 
ing  this  condition,  laid  stress  on  the  ■  advantage  taken 
of  his  youth  and  inexperience,  and  expressly  refused  to 
ratify  that  former  renunciation  of  his  father  to  the  larger 
duchies.  Frederick  II.  maintained  that  by  the  retro¬ 
cession  of  Schwiebus  those  older  claims  had  regained 
their  former  force  and  vigor. 

Apart  from  the  justice  of  the  claims  themselves,  it  is 
urged  that  Frederick  should  first  have  tried  the  path  of 
peaceful  negotiation ;  but  here  Austria  reaped  the  harvest 
of  her  own  previous  perfidy.  When  had  negotiations  with 
her  ever  led  to  tangible  results  ?  when  had  her  means  been 
anything  but  false  and  underhanded?  Frederick  was 
willing  enough  to  negotiate,  but  he  wished  to  do  so  from 
a  coign  of  vantage,  and  for  that  reason  he  threw  his  armies 
into  Silesia.  More  than  this,  the  result  proved  that  he 
was  stronger  than  his  antagonist;  but  who  at  the  time 
could  have  foreseen  this?  Austria  was  three  or  four 
times  the  size  of  Prussia,  among  her  troops  were  veterans 
of  two  wars,  and  she  had  numerous  allies ;  nor  was  Maria 
Theresa  personally  so  helpless  and  alone  as  many  have 
supposed.  Her  strength  of  character  brought  her  to  the 
fore  and  made  her  a  redoubtable  enemy  for  Frederick;  but 
the  latter  could  not  know  that  her  husband,  Francis  of 
Lorraine,  would  prove  so  complete  a  nonentity.  It  was 
with  him  that  all  Frederick’s  thoughts  were  at  first  busy, 
with  him  that  negotiations  were  carried  on.  The  tragedy 
of  Maria’s  situation  lay  not  in  the  fact  that  she  was  a 
beautiful  young  woman  thrown  entirely  on  her  own  re¬ 
sources,  but  in  the  circumstances  that  her  country  had  been 


128 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Pleasure 
of  the 
Silesians 
in  being 
conquered. 


Entry  into 
Breslau. 


wretchedly  mismanaged,  that  of  the  list  of  soldiers  on 
paper  not  half  were  fit  to  take  the  field,  that  luxury  and 
extravagance  had  emptied  the  treasury,  that  rottenness 
and  corruption  ruled  in  all  the  public  offices.  A  state  that 
has  thus  sown  to  the  wind  is  sure  to  reap  the  whirlwind. 

Frederick’s  task  was  rendered  immeasurably  easier 
from  the  fact  that  the  Silesiaris,  groaning  under  bad 
government  and  religious  persecution,  showed  very  little 
aversion  to  being  conquered.  With  the  exception  of  the 
three  fortresses  of  Brieg,  Glogau,  and  Neisse,  in  which 
the  regular  Austrian  troops  took  refuge,  the  whole  land 
submitted  without  a  blow.  When  the  Austrian  minister, 
Bartenstein,  confessed  that  “  an  excessive  zeal  in  religious 
matters  had  made  the  number  of  malcontents  very  large,” 
he  was  stating  the  case  far  too  mildly.  The  Treaty  of  Alt- 
Bans  tadt,  by  which  Charles  XII.  of  Sweden  had  wrested 
a  promise  of  toleration  for  the  Protestants  from  the  Em¬ 
peror  Charles  VI.,  had  been  robbed  of  all  its  value  by  the 
intrigues  of  Jesuit  confessors.  Under  the  head  of  “apos¬ 
tates  ”  were  included  many  whose  only  sin  consisted  in 
having  Protestant  relatives.  Frederick,  at  his  coming, 
found  the  prisons  full  of  those  who  were  suffering  for 
their  faith ;  and'  one  of  his  first  and  most  popular  acts  was 
to  send  to  Berlin  for  a  batch  of  preachers. 

With  the  citizens  of  Breslau,  the  capital  of  Silesia, 
Frederick  treated  as  with  an  independent  power,  securing 
their  neutrality  and  promising  not  to  burden  them  with  a 
Prussian  garrison.  Then  he  held  an  entry  into  the  town 
the  like  of  which,  under  similar  circumstances,  has  rarely 
been  seen.  A  company  of  militia  received  him  at  the 
gate;  the  garrison  formed  in  two  lines,  down  which  he 
rode  on  horseback,  followed,  by  a  long  train  of  officers, 
pages,  and  lackeys.  His  coach  of  state,  empty  save  for 
his  ermine  and  velvet  mantle,  preceded  him;  even  the  car 


THE  WARS  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  129 

containing  his  belongings  was  drawn  by  gayly  decked 
mules.  No  lord  returning  to  his  own  could  have  been 
greeted  with  more  enthusiasm ;  never-ending  cheers  fol¬ 
lowed  him  to  his  quarters,  and  he  was  finally  called  out 
to  his  balcony  to  bow  his  thanks.  All  the  chief  officials 
and  grandees  accepted  his  invitation  to  a  dinner,  at  which 
he  drank  to  the  town’s  prosperity,  — his  soldiers  the  while 
moving  peacefully  about  the  streets  as  objects  of  admira¬ 
tion  to  every  one,  especially,  writes  a  Breslau  diarist,  to 
“our  Silesian  womankind.”  A  few  days  later  came  a 
grand  ball,  and  the  civic  chroniclers  took  the  trouble  to 
note  the  names  of  each  and  all  of  the  ladies  whom  the 
handsome  young  king  favored  with  a  dance. 

Far  from  joyous,  as  may  be  imagined,  were  the  feelings 
of  the  queen  of  Hungary  and  archduchess  of  Austria  at 
being  robbed  of  the  province  which  she  considered  the 
“fairest  jewel  in  her  crown.”  Maria  Theresa  was  not  the 
woman  to  take  lightly  a  blow  like  this ;  piety  toward  her 
father’s  memory,  if  nothing  else,  made  it  a  sacred  duty  to 
her  to  maintain  his  possessions  intact.  And  she  was  pos¬ 
sessed  of  every  quality  that  could  rouse  her  people  to  risk 
all  in  her  defence ;  men  praised  her  lovely  voice,  her  dra¬ 
matic  abilities,  her  grace,  her  tact,  her  skill  with  the  bow 
and  arrow,  her  horsemanship,  her  fluency  in  languages. 
“  Oh,  if  she  were  only  a  man,  with  just  the  qualities  she 
actually  possesses,”  sighed  old  Chancellor  Sinzendorf  to 
the  English  envoy,  Robinson.  On  two  occasions  the 
Hungarians  were  roused  by  her  to  a  perfect  fervor  of  enthu¬ 
siasm  :  once  when  she  appeared  in  their  Diet,  accompanied 
by  her  child,  and  pleaded  for  their  aid;  and  again  when, 
at  her  coronation,  she  rode  up  the  Mount  of  Defiance  and 
swung  her  sword  to  the  four  winds  of  heaven  as  a  challenge 
to  all  her  enemies. 

Her  husband,  on  the  other  hand,  was  almost  universally 


Personality 
of  Maria 
Theresa. 


VOL.  it  —  K 


130 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Francis  of 
Lorraine. 


Failure  of 
negoti¬ 
ations. 


despised.  Four  years  before,  as  generalissimo  of  all  the 
Austrian  forces,  he  had  failed  to  gain  credit  or  renown  in 
the  Turkish  war  that  had  ended  so  miserably  with  the 
Peace  of  Belgrade ;  the  bitterest  and  most  hateful  com¬ 
plaints  were  later  brought  against  him.  His  wife,  though 
devoted  to  him,  was  not  blind  to  his  faults ;  there  were 
times  in  these  wars  with  Frederick  when  she  begged  and 
pleaded  with  him  not  to  take  a  command.  “  I  at  last  took 
refuge,”  she  once  wrote  to  her  sister,  “in  our  usual  re¬ 
sources  of  caresses  and  tears ;  but  of  what  effect  are  they 
on  a  husband  of  nine  years’  standing?  .  .  .  At  last  I 
became  very  angry,  which  served  me  so  well  that  both  he 
and  I  were  taken  ill.” 

Almost  immediately,  on  her  own  accession,  Maria  had 
insisted  that  Francis  be  declared  coregent;  and  it  was  to 
him,  as  we  have  seen,  that  Frederick’s  envoys  directed 
themselves.  In  return  for  the  coveted  province,  they 
offered  every  advantage  of  alliance  and  friendship — -sup¬ 
port  against  all  enemies,  the  Prussian  vote  at  the  impend¬ 
ing  imperial  election,  even  a  large  sum  of  money.  The 
grand  duke  on  the  whole  was  firm,  and  took  a  lofty  tone. 
“Rather  the  Turks  before  Vienna,”  he  cried  out,  “or  the 
surrender  of  the  Netherlands  to  France,  or  any  concession 
to  Bavaria  and  Saxony,  than  the  abandonment  of  Silesia.” 
On  two  separate  occasions,  however,  when  Francis  had 
just  made  utterances  that  sounded  somewhat  more  con¬ 
ciliatory,  there  came  a  light  knock  at  the  door,  and  the 
queen  appeared  with  an  innocent  question.  The  envoys 
were  at  last  dismissed  with  the  haughty  remark,  “  Go 
home  to  your  master  and  tell  him  that,  so  long  as  a  single 
one  of  his  soldiers  remains  in  Silesia,  we  have  not  a  word 
to  say!  ”  It  was  in  vain  that  Frederick  finally  offered  to 
content  himself  with  a  part,  instead  of  the  whole,  of 
Silesia;  in  vain  that  he  tried  to  win  the  support  of  the 


THE  WARS  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


131 


Austrian  councillors  by  the  promise  of  enormous  bribes. 
All  offers  were  scornfully  and  categorically  refused.  The 
“woman  with  the  heart  of  a  king”  remained  obdurate,  in 
spite  of  her  desperate  circumstances. 

For  the  present,  Austria’s  expected  allies  had  failed  to 
make  their  appearance.  In  Russia,  indeed,  amid  palace 
revolutions  like  those  of  the  most  benighted  Oriental 
monarchy,  a  party  came  to  the  fore  that  was  distinctly 
hostile  to  Prussia;  and  Podewils,  when  he  heard  of  the 
fall  of  Frederick’s  friend,  the  prime  minister,  Miinnich, 
wrote  to  his  master,  “Pandora’s  box  is  opened;  we  are 
entering  into  the  most  terrible  crisis  that  ever  impended 
over  the  house  of  Brandenburg.”  But  Podewils  was 
always  over  anxious.  “Gently,  gently,”  Frederick  had 
been  obliged  to  say  to  him  shortly  before,  “you  are  get¬ 
ting  too  excited.”  Again,  on  another  occasion,  “I  am 
sorry  to  have  to  tell  you  that  I  don’t  know  a  more  chicken- 
hearted  man  than  you.”  Russia,  as  it  turned  out,  had 
enough  to  do  to  attend  to  her  own  troubled  affairs,  and 
the  same  was  true  of  England,  which  had  more  real  sym¬ 
pathy  with  Maria  Theresa,  and,  on  account  of  Hanoverian 
jealousies,  more  real  hatred  of  Frederick  than  any  other 
power.  “  We  must  clip  this  prince’s  wings,”  said  George 
II.  to  the  Polish-Saxon  envoy;  “he  is  too  dangerous  for 
both  of  us ;  ”  but  there  were  more  factors  to  be  reckoned 
with  in  England  than  the  mere  will  of  the  king.  And 
Saxony,  though  dreading  above  all  things  the  aggrandize¬ 
ment  of  her  Prussian  neighbor,  and  in  every  way  secretly 
conspiring  against  Frederick,  was  in  too  weak  hands  to 
accomplish  much;  her  elector,  from  the  first,  offended  Aus¬ 
tria  by  his  rapacious  demands  for  eventual  compensation. 

Frederick’s  own  determined  attitude  did  as  much  as 
anything  to  keep  outsiders  at  bay  and  to  give  his  first 
encounter  at  arms  the  form  of  a  gigantic  duel  with  Aus- 


Austrian 

sympa¬ 

thizers. 


132 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Austrian 

delays. 


tria.  “I  shall  perish  rather  than  give  up  my  project,”  he 
said  to  the  English  envoy,  Guy  Dickens;  “the  other 
powers  need  not  think  that  I  am  to  be  intimidated  by 
threats.  ...  If  the  worst  comes  to  the  worst  I  shall 
join  with  France  and  beat  and  bite  and  devastate  in  all 
directions !  ” 

As  for  Maria  Theresa,  many  a  weary  day  passed  before 
she  was  able  to  despatch  an  army  to  Silesia ;  she  could  do 
nothing  to  hinder  the  fall  of  Glogau,  which  surrendered, 
after  a  desperate  storm,  to  young  Leopold  of  Dessau. 
Frederick  in  the  meantime  had  had  narrow  escapes  from 
attempts  on  his  life;  once,  when  he  himself  chanced  to 
have  ridden  ahead,  his  carriage  was  shot  at  and  two  per¬ 
sons  in  it  killed.  An  Austrian  who  was  captured  declared 
that  he  had  been  hired  by  the  Grand  Duke  of  Lorraine  to 
assassinate  the  king ;  and  Frederick,  though  not  in  the 
least  believing  this  assertion,  was  not  above  making  use  of 
it  for  political  purposes.  For  the  world’s  benefit  Podewils 
was  ordered  to  “paint  the  unworthy  proceedings  of  the 
Vienna  court  in  suitable  colors.”  The  risks  that  he  was 
constantly  running  caused  the  young  king  at  this  time  to 
issue  directions  for  the  eventuality  of  his  death  or  cap¬ 
tivity.  “Should  I  have  the  misfortune  to  be  taken  alive,” 
he  wrote  to  Podewils,  “I  command  you  unconditionally 
—  and  your  head  shall  answer  for  it  —  that  during  my 
absence  you  obey  none  of  my  orders ;  that  you  serve  my 
brother  with  your  counsels ;  and  that  no  unworthy  step  be 
taken  by  the  state  to  secure  my  release.  ...  I  am  only 
king  so  long  as  I  am  free.”  In  case  of  his  death  his  body 
was  to  be  burned  after  the  manner  of  the  Romans,  his 
ashes  to  be  deposited  in  a  vase  at  Rheinsberg,  and  a 
monument  to  be  raised  to  him  like  that  of  the  Horatii  at 
Tusculum. 

When  the  Austrians  did  at  last  cross  the  Giant  Moun- 


THE  WARS  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


133 


tains,  their  coming  was  in  the  nature  of  a  surprise.  Their 
commander,  Neipperg,  in  so  far  justified  his  boast  of 
having  learned  the  art  of  war  under  Prince  Eugene,  as  to 
succeed  in  conducting  his  army  quickly  and  safely  over 
an  unguarded  pass ;  but  soon  he  was  obliged  to  send  word 
to  Vienna  that  “to  tell  the  truth  he  had  not  yet  decided 
whether  to  turn  to  the  right  or  to  the  left.”  He  could 
not  know  that  Frederick  was  obliged  to  make  superhuman 
efforts  to  bring  together  his  troops,  which  were  scattered 
in  half  a  dozen  different  camps.  The  Silesians  proved 
bad  informers,  and  Neipperg,  stationing  his  army  at  Moll- 
witz  and  the  neighboring  villages,  was  forced  to  remain 
on  the  defensive  and  await  the  course  of  events.  Here 
at  Mollwitz,  Frederick  determined  to  attack  him,  although, 
in  spite  of  its  being  the  month  of  April,  the  snow  lay  two 
feet  deep  upon  the  ground.  His  infantry  was  superior  in 
numbers  to  that  of  the  Austrians,  whose  cavalry,  on  the 
other  hand,  was  stronger. 

Mollwitz  was  one  of  those  battles  on  the  result  of  which 
everything  depended;  not  only  did  alliances  hang  in  the 
balance,  but  the  enemy,  if  successful,  could  have  barred  the 
way  to  Breslau  and  Berlin,  which  were  Frederick’s  bases 
of  supplies.  And  the  result  seemed  very  doubtful.  The 
Prussian  troops,  thoroughly  as  they  were  exercised  in  all 
the  arts  of  the  parade  ground,  were  utterly  unused  to  real 
war;  before  the  crashing  cavalry  charge  of  the  Austrian 
generals,  Romer  and  Berlichingen,  their  line  was  pierced 
in  several  places,  and  Schulenburg,  whose  slowness  in 
taking  his  position  had  given  the  enemy  their  advantage, 
was  mortally  wounded  while  trying  to  retrieve  his  error. 
To  add  to  the  confusion  the  second  battle  line,  seeing 
nothing  but  Austrian  cavalry  before  them,  fired  into  the 
rear  of  their  own  first  line.  On  the  verge  of  despair, 
Frederick  sent  one  of  his  lieutenants  to  the  old  Dessauer 


The  battle 
of  Moll¬ 
witz. 


134 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Victory 
snatched 
from  de¬ 
feat. 


The  French 
alliance. 


with  the  news  that  the  battle  was  lost;  he  himself,  by  the 
advice  of  Schwerin,  —  who,  indeed,  had  not  yet  aban¬ 
doned  hope,  —  left  the  field  with  a  few  followers  and  rode 
through  the  gathering  darkness  to  Oppeln.  Here  he  fell 
in  with  Austrian  hussars,  and  nothing  but  the  extraor¬ 
dinary  speed  of  his  horse  saved  him  from  capture. 

Not  until  two  o’clock  the  next  morning,  did  Frederick 
learn  that  he  had  fled  from  the  most  brilliant  of  victories. 
Schwerin,  after  a  peremptory  order  to  young  Leopold  of 
Dessau  to  stop  the  suicidal  firing  of  his  men,  had  ridden 
up  to  the  standard  of  the  first  battalion  of  the  guards,  had 
ordered  the  music  to  play  for  an  attack,  and  then,  with 
the  whole  right  wing,  had  fallen  upon  the  Austrian  infan¬ 
try.  His  muskets  were  better  than  those  of  the  enemy, 
while  the  iron  ramrods  enabled  his  men  to  load  and  fire 
more  quickly.  The  Austrian  foot-soldiers  were  soon  taking 
refuge  one  behind  the  other ;  while  the  cavalry  skulked  far 
in  the  rear,  refusing  to  advance  even  though  General  Ber- 
lichingen,  in  his  rage  and  despair,  clove  the  skulls  of  two  of 
his  men  and  swept  several  from  their  horses  with  his  sword. 
The  last  great  act  of  the  battle  of  Mollwitz  was  an  advance 
of  the  whole  Prussian  left  wing,  at  double-quick  time  and 
with  an  absolute  precision  that  would  have  gladdened  the 
heart  of  Frederick  William  I.  and  justified  all  his  minute 
care.  Never  in  his  life,  wrote  one  of  the  enemy’s  own 
officers,  had  he  seen  anything  so  superb.  The  tables  were 
completely  turned,  and  Neipperg  was  soon  in  full  retreat. 
In  his  own  account  of  this  battle,  Frederick  speaks  of  his 
infantry  as  “ Caesars  and  heroes,”  but  of  his  cavalry  as 
“not  worth  the  devil’s  taking”;  while  his  own  absence 
from  the  field  is  too  bitter  a  memory  even  to  find  mention. 

While  Austria  was  recuperating  her  bruised  and  beaten 
forces,  Frederick  had  time  to  attend  to  the  matter  of  alli¬ 
ances.  His  camp  at  Mollwitz  was  sought  out  by  envoys 


THE  WARS  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


135 


from  all  the  powers;  it  was  immediately  evident  how 
much  higher  he  had  risen  in  the  general  scale  of  estima¬ 
tion.  The  fate  of  Europe  hung  on  his  decision ;  for  Belle- 
Isle,  the  French  envoy,  had  appeared,  with  all  the  pomp 
and  magnificence  of  a  reigning  prince,  to  advocate  a 
scheme  for  the  thorough  despoliation  of  Austria.  Her 
provinces  were  to  go  to  pay  the  electors  for  discarding 
the  traditions  of  three  centuries  and  putting  a  Wittels- 
bach  on  the  throne  of  the  empire.  Frederick  wavered 
long,  coquetting  with  England;  but  at  last,  by  a  treaty 
signed  at  Breslau  on  June  4,  1741,  accepted  the  French 
programme.  In  a  number  of  secret  articles,  France  guar¬ 
anteed  to  him  Lower  Silesia,  with  Breslau,  and  prom¬ 
ised  not  only  to  vigorously  prosecute  the  war  on  her  own 
account,  but  to  assure  the  non-interference  of  Russia  by 
stirring  up  Sweden  to  war  against  her.  ,.In  spite  of  dis¬ 
sensions  between  Belle-Isle  and  his  chief,  Cardinal  Fleury, 
an  allied  French  and  Bavarian  army  was  soon  in  the  field, 
and  succeeded  in  taking  Linz,  the  capital  of  Upper  Aus¬ 
tria.  It  would  have  been  easy  to  fall  upon  Vienna,  which 
was  ill  garrisoned  and  ill  fortified  ;  and  Frederick  did  his 
utmost  to  induce  the  French  to  undertake  the  task.  He 
burned  with  impatience,  he  wrote  to  Belle-Isle,  to  embrace 
him  as  victor  before  the  gates  of  the  city.  “  This  Austria 
must  be  struck  to  earth,”  he  said  to  Valory;  “incurable 
wounds  must  be  inflicted  upon  her  before  she  is  in  a  con¬ 
dition  to  parry  the  blows!”  But  Belle-Isle  preferred  to 
march  on  Prague — ostensibly  from  military  considerations, 
but  in  reality  because  the  French  feared  to  do  too  much 
for  their  emperor  elect,  Charles  Albert  of  Bavaria.  “  If 
we  make  the  elector  master  of  Vienna,  we  shall  no  longer 
be  master  of  the  elector,”  a  French  diplomat  is  said  to 
have  remarked.  Frederick  found  that  his  own  counsel 
weighed  for  nothing. 


136 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  truce 
of  Klein- 
Schnellen- 
dorf. 


The 

Emperor 

Charles 

VII. 


Prague  fell  through  the  tardiness  and  bad  generalship 
of  the  Grand  Duke  Francis;  and  Maria’s  situation  was 
growing  more  and  more  desperate,  when  a  voice  called  to 
her,  as  it  were,  from  the  deep,  and  a  hand  was  stretched 
out  from  the  least  expected  of  quarters.  Frederick  had 
once  said  to  Podewils,  “  If  honesty  will  help  us,  we  will 
be  honest  men ;  if  duplicity  is  needed,  then  let  us  be 
rogues.”  Now,  discontented  with  the  French  proceed¬ 
ings,  aware  that  it  was  to  his  advantage  not  to  have  a  pro¬ 
tracted  war,  anxious,  above  all  things,  to  get  Neipperg’s 
army,  —  which  was  safely  under  the  shadow  of  the  fortress 
of  Neisse, — out  of  Silesia,  he  closed,  through  the  me¬ 
dium  of  the  English  Hyndford,  the  secret  agreement 
with  Austria,  known  as  the  truce  of  Klein-Schnellendorf 
(October  9,  1741).  Everything  was  done  to  deceive  the 
French.  Valory,  who  was  in  the  Prussian  camp  at  the 
time,  knew  nothing  of  what  was  going  on.  A  number  of 
articles  concerned  themselves  with  measures  by  which 
appearances  were  to  be  preserved:  there  were  to  be  several 
skirmishes  and  a  sham  siege  of  Neisse,  which  was  to 
capitulate  at  the  end  of  fifteen  days. 

Comment  is  superfluous  when  delving  into  this  slough 
of  intrigue;  many  a  diplomatic  move,  especially  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  will  not  bear  the  test  of  plain  morality. 
Small  consolation  that  in  this  matter  one  country  was  as 
bad  as  another!  But,  even  from  a  political  standpoint, 
the  truce  of  Klein-Schnellendorf  was  a  false  move  on 
Frederick’s  part ;  for  the  benefit  to  Maria  Theresa  of  having 
Neipperg’s  army  for  use  against  the  French,  far  outweighed 
the  disadvantage  of  losing  the  one  fortress  of  Neisse. 
Frederick,  indeed,  on  the  pretext  that  the  promise  of 
secrecy  had  been  violated,  soon  repudiated  his  agreement 
and  occupied  the  Austrian  province  of  Glatz ;  but  from  this 
time  on  the  fortunes  of  Maria  Theresa  were  on  the  mend. 


THE  WARS  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


137 


The  French  were  dislodged  from  Linz ;  the  Austrians  were 
able  to  carry  the  war  into  Charles  Albert’s  own  dominions, 
and,  in  the  very  days  when,  as  Charles  VII.,  the  elector 
was  being  crowned  emperor  of  the  Romans  at  Frankfort, 
his  Bavarian  possessions  were  wrested  from  him.  A 
witticism  against  his  field  marshal,  Count  Torring,  to  the 
effect  that  he  was  like  a  drum  because  only  heard  from 
when  beaten,  went  the  rounds  of  friend  and  foe.  A 
medal  was  struck  with  two  images  of  Charles  himself, 
the  one  as  elector,  with  “Aut  Caesar  aut  nihil,”  the  other 
as  emperor,  with  “Et  Caesar  et  nihil.” 

Meanwhile  the  Austrian  commander,  Prince  Charles  of 
Lorraine,  had  come  upon  the  Prussians  at  the  village  of 
Chotusitz,  not  far  from  the  Bohemian  town  of  Czaslau; 
but,  through  an  error  of  judgment,  had  allowed  Frederick 
time  to  unite  with  the  young  Dessauer  and  to  draw  up  his 
army  in  good  order.  Then,  indeed,  the  Austrians  fought 
like  tigers  and  carried  the  struggle  into  the  narrow  village 
streets,  from  which,  by  setting  fire  to  the  straw-roofed 
houses,  they  finally  dislodged  the  Prussian  occupants. 
Twice  Frederick’s  wavering  troops  had  to  be  urged  back 
to  their  duty:  once  by  a  brave  officer,  who  seized  a  banner 
and  threw  himself  into  the  breach;  again,  “in  the  name 
of  God  and  of  the  king,”  by  a  fiery  young  field  chaplain. 
The  Austrians  attributed  their  own  final  defeat  to  the  fact 
that  their  cavalry  had  stopped  to  plunder  the  Prussian 
camp. 

“Who  could  have  foretold,”  wrote  Frederick  a  few  days 
later  to  his  friend  Jordan,  “that  Providence  would  choose 
a  poet  to  overthrow  the  European  system  and  cross  the 
calculations  of  kings!  ”  Yet  in  reality  there  was  little  of 
pride  or  exultation  in  his  heart.  lie  had  once  more  de¬ 
termined  to  make  a  private  peace  with  Austria,  even  on 
less  advantageous  terms  than  he  had  demanded  before  the 

|| 


The 

battle  of 
Chotusitz. 


138 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  Peace 
of  Breslau. 


battle.  At  that  time,  he  had  asked  for  two  Bohemian 
counties ;  these  Maria  Theresa  still  refused  to  relinquish, 
preferring,  as  she  said,  to  perish  in  the  ruins  of  Vienna. 
“If  the  gates  of  hell  should  open,”  she  would  not  give  up 
Koniggratz.  By  the  treaty  of  Breslau,  signed  in  July, 
1742,  she  saved  for  herself  not  only  these  districts,  but 
even  a  small  part  of  Upper  Silesia. 

The  reason  for  Frederick’s  second  defection  from  the 
French  was,  as  before,  their  arrogance  and  uselessness 
as  allies;  in  these  very  days  the  Duke  of  Broglie’s  in¬ 
capacity  had  brought  about  a  disastrous  defeat  —  a  new 
“imbroglio,”  said  his  enemies.  But  the  young  king’s 
conscience  was  not  clear;  it  was  in  vain  that  he  armed 
himself  with  a  sardonic  smile  when  talking  to  Valory,  and 
spoke  of  the  “  little  goading  speeches  ”  of  the  Parisians 
as  parrot-like  utterances  which  they  themselves  did  not 
understand.  He  really  did  feel  sore  and  sensitive,  espe¬ 
cially  when  the  sentiments  once  expressed  in  his  writing 
against  Machiavelli  were  ruthlessly  submitted  to  the 
test  of  his  own  conduct.  He  went  so  far  as  to  wTrite  a 
pamphlet  in  self-defence  —  which  Podewils  would  not 
allow  him  to  publish  —  and  a  letter  to  Fleury,  in  which 
he  threw  the  whole  blame  upon  Broglie.  He  likened  him 
to  a  Penelope,  who  was  undoing  all  his,  Frederick’s, 
work:  “Can  I  be  held  responsible  for  Broglie’s  not  being 
a  Turenne?  Out  of  a  night  owl  I  cannot  make  an  eagle.” 

Having  secured  by  the  Treaty  of  Breslau  a  territory 
equal  to  one-third  of  the  whole  former  Prussian  state,  and 
having  been  recognized  by  the  voice  of  his  people  as  “  the 
Great,”  Frederick  could  afford  to  stand  aside  and  watch 
the  European  war.  With  feelings  far  from  pleasurable 
he  saw  Austria  extricate  herself  from  her  difficulties,  make 
favorable  treaties  and  alliances,  and  gain  military  advan¬ 
tages.  His  contempt  for  the  French  grew  to  withering 


THE  WARS  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


139 


scorn  when  he  heard  that  Maillebois  had  abandoned  an 
attempt  to  relieve  Prague ;  that  Belle-Isle,  in  consequence, 
had  been  obliged,  in  the  dead  of  winter,  to  make  a  disas¬ 
trous  retreat ;  and  that  the  main  French  army  of  seventy 
thousand  men  had  been  pushed  out  of  Bavaria  almost 
without  striking  a  blow.  “I  must  confess,”  Frederick 
wrote,  “  that  bad  as  was  my  opinion  of  old  Broglie,  his 
present  conduct  exceeds  all  expectations  in  the  way  of 
cowardice  and  folly.”  After  the  battle  of  Dettingen,  in 
which  the  so-called  Pragmatic  army,  consisting  largely  of 
English,  defeated  the  Duke  de  Noailles;  and  which  was 
considered  in  London  so  brilliant  a  victory  that  Handel 
composed  a  Te  Deum  in  its  honor,  Frederick  declared  that 
he  never  again  wished  to  hear  the  name  of  a  Frenchman. 

England,  on  account  of  her  own  enmity  to  France,  had  The  second 
become  the  stanchest  supporter  of  Maria  Theresa.  The  Silesian 
“  firebrand,  ”  Lord  Carteret,  had  introduced  an  entirely  new  War> 
spirit  into  her  policy,  and  showed  activity  in  all  directions. 

It  was  largely  his  doing  that  Austria,  in  September  1743, 
signed  with  the  king  of  Sardinia  the  Treaty  of  Worms,  by 
which,  in  return  for  land  cessions  in  Lombardy,  Charles 
Emmanuel  agreed  to  fight  the  French  with  forty-five  thou¬ 
sand  men.  Frederick  noted  with  alarm  that  this  Worms 
agreement, — which  guaranteed  Austria’s  possessions  on  the 
basis  of  former  treaties,  — passed  over  in  silence  the  recent 
Breslau  provisions.  Maria  Theresa  was  becoming  aggres¬ 
sive;  she  spoke  openly  of  “the  unfree  election  by  which 
the  elector  of  Bavaria  (Frederick’s  protege)  is  said  to  have 
become  emperor,”  and  sent  a  protest  to  the  Diet  to  the 
effect  that  the  Bohemian  vote  belonged  to  her  and  had 
not  been  properly  cast.  The  interference  of  the  English, 
too,  seemed  to  Frederick  full  of  menace.  He  wished,  he 
declared  to  Podewils,  that  the  devil  would  take  his  uncle, 

George  II.  “Listen,  my  lord,”  he  said  to  Hyndford,  “I 


l 


140 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Failure  of 
Frederick’s 
Bohemian 
campaign. 


\ 


don’t  care  what  happens  to  the  French,  but  I  shall  not 
allow  the  emperor  to  be  ruined  or  dethroned.”  A  treaty, 
concluded  between  Saxony  and  Austria,  in  January,  1744, 
finally  determined  him  to  reenter  the  arena;  and,  what 
was  more,  not  to  withdraw  from  it  empty-handed.  By 
an  agreement  made  at  Frankfort  he  secured  the  help  of  the 
young  Elector  Palatine  and  the  Landgrave  of  Hesse-Cassel, 
and  then  so  far  conquered  his  own  repugnances  as  to  sue 
for  an  alliance  with  France, — even  condescending  to 
write  a  personal  letter  to  the  Duchess  of  Chateauroux, 
the  all-powerful  mistress  of  Louis  XV.  Largely  by  her 
influence,  a  treaty  was  drawn  up  by  which  the  prospective 
spoils  were  apportioned  between  Prussia,  France,  and  the 
emperor.  Louis  XV.  ’s  share  was  to  be  some  coveted 
fortresses  in  the  Netherlands ;  Frederick’s,  three  Bohemian 
counties,  in  addition  to  the  whole  of  Silesia;  Charles 
Albert’s,  the  rest  of  Bohemia. 

Thus  the  struggle  began  anew.  As  general  of  the 
emperor,  Frederick  demanded  and  enforced  the  right  of 
free  passage  through  Saxon  territory;  made  a  dash  for 
Prague,  which  he  captured  without  difficulty;  and  then 
pushed  farther  south,  with  some  thoughts  of  reaching 
Vienna.  Maria’s  army  was  in  the  midst  of  a  victorious 
advance  into  Alsace  when  the  news  came  of  the  fresh 
invasion.  Prince  Charles  hastily  recrossed  the  Rhine, 
and  now  all  the  worthlessness  of  the  French  as  allies  once 
more  came  to  light.  Regard  for  one  of  the  first  rules  of 
joint  warfare  should  have  led  them  to  hold  fast  the  Aus¬ 
trian  army,  which  was  retreating  from  them  and  which 
their  own  forces  outnumbered  as  two  to  one ;  instead,  they 
allowed  it  to  return  unmolested,  while  their  own  troops 
marched  off  to  the  Netherlands.  Frederick,  as  may  be 
imagined,  was  soon  in  sore  straits  —  the  more  so  as 
twenty-two  thousand  Saxons  marched  to  Maria  Theresa’s 


THE  WARS  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


141 


aid.  Far  from  carrying  out  his  threat  of  “setting  his  foot 
on  the  throat  of  his  enemy  ”  in  Vienna,  he  was  reduced  to 
a  strict  defensive  and  was  compelled  to  retreat  to  Silesia 
as  best  he  could.  Gladly  enough  would  he  have  risked 
an  engagement ;  but  the  policy  of  the  Austrians,  now  led 
by  the  gifted  Traun,  whom  even  Frederick  acknowledged 
as  at  this  time  his  own  superior,  was  to  delay  and  to 
annoy.  As  post  after  post  was  relinquished,  as  pro¬ 
visions  became  scarcer  and  scarcer  on  account  of  the 
hostile  attitude  of  the  Bohemian  peasants,  a  demoraliza¬ 
tion  spread  among  the  soldiers  such  as  a  royal  Prussian 
army  had  never  yet  known.  The  Austrians  maintained 
that  they  had  actually  counted  nineteen  thousand  de¬ 
serters  ;  and  certain  it  is  that  the  army  of  eighty  thousand 
men  soon  dwindled  to  half  its  original  size.  Maria  Theresa 
felt  sure  of  the  future,  and  issued  a  proclamation  to  the 
Silesians,  promising  them  speedy  liberation  from  the  “un¬ 
bearable  yoke  ”  under  which  they  were  languishing. 

As  for  Frederick,  who  blamed  himself  greatly  for  many 
of  the  misfortunes  that  had  occurred,  and  confessed  frankly 
that  “  no  general  had  ever  committed  so  many  blunders  in 
a  single  season,”  he  was  determined  to  strike  some  signal 
blow,  to  risk  le  tout  pour  le  tout,  and  to  return  to  Berlin 
as  victor  or  not  at  all.  Strangely  enough,  the  image  of 
Maria  Theresa,  fearless  among  overwhelming  dangers, 
rose  before  him  and  steeled  him  to  new  efforts :  “  Think 
of  this  woman  who  did  not  despair  when  the  enemy  stood 
before  Vienna  and  flooded  her  richest  provinces,”  he  wrote 
to  Podewils. 

Frederick  had  purposely  left  the  passes  of  the  Giant 
Mountains  unguarded,  in  the  hope  that  the  enemy  would 
cross  them  and  attempt  to  recover  Silesia;  but  he  was 
hardly  prepared  for  the  haste  with  which  the  Hungarian 
pandours  and  hussars  swarmed  into  the  land.  He  was 


The  battle 
of  Hohen- 
friedberg. 


142 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


completely  cut  off  from  a  part  of  his  forces,  which  the 
Margrave  of  Schwedt  commanded  in  Jagerndorf;  and 
only  a  desperate  ride  of  General  Ziethen  to  bring  Schwedt 
his  instructions,  and  a  splendid  return  march  of  Otto 
Schwerin  through  the  midst  of  the  enemy,  prevented  a 
grave  catastrophe.  “Kiss  Schwerin  for  me  a  thousand 
times,”  wrote  Frederick  to  the  margrave,  “and  tell  him 
that  as  long  as  I  live  I  will  never  forget  his  bravery  and 
steadfastness.” 

The  Austrians  had  underrated  the  Prussian  forces. 
Taking  the  failure  to  guard  the  passes  for  a  sign  of  weak¬ 
ness,  they  determined  to  attack  Frederick  at  Hohenfried- 
berg,  not  far  from  Schweidnitz.  “  There  can  be  no  God  in 
heaven  if  we  do  not  win  this  battle,”  said  Prince  Charles 
of  Lorraine  to  one  of  his  adjutants.  Free  from  anxiety, 
the  Austrian  leader  —  the  man  who  had  felt  so  superior  to 
Traun  that  he  had  forced  him  out  of  the  command  —  lay 
quietly  down  to  sleep  within  sight  of  the  Prussian  camp, 
having  been  assured  by  his  scouts  that  the  attack  might 
safely  be  postponed  until  the  following  day.  But,  leav¬ 
ing  his  fires  burning  and  his  tents  standing,  Frederick, 
with  his  whole  army,  stole  softly  out  into  the  night  and 
took  up  a  more  favorable  position.  At  early  dawn  the 
Saxon  contingents  were  attacked  and  put  to  flight  be¬ 
fore  the  Austrians  were  ready  to  begin  their  fire ;  Prince 
Charles’s  right  wing  was  easily  thrown  into  confusion, 
and  a  magnificent  charge  of  the  Baireuth  dragoons,  under 
Gessler,  completed  its  ruin.  Sixty-six  standards  were 
captured  and  twenty-one  battalions  routed  —  numbers 
which,  by  Frederick’s  command,  were  later  incorporated  in 
the  Gessler  coat  of  arms.  The  rest  of  the  beaten  army  re¬ 
treated  as  best  it  could,  leaving  sixteen  thousand  men  on 
the  field  and  losing  nearly  nine  thousand  stragglers  and 
deserters.  “Never  did  the  old  Romans  do  anything  more 


THE  WARS  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


143 


brilliant,”  wrote  Frederick  to  Podewils;  and  then  set  to 
work  to  compose  a  commemorative  march,  which  is  played 
in  the  Prussian  army  to  this  day. 

Frederick  hoped  to  have  achieved  from  Hohenfriedberg 
“a  good  peace  and  a  long  rest,”  but  he  was  doomed  to  dis¬ 
appointment.  Maria  Theresa  was  by  no  means  reduced 
to  desperate  straits.  She  still  had  the  Saxons,  English, 
and  Dutch  on  her  side  ;  and  when,  in  these  days,  the  Em¬ 
peror  Charles  VII.  died,  she  came  to  terms  with  the  new 
Bavarian  elector  by  the  Treaty  of  Fiissen.  The  French 
conveniently  confined  their  efforts  to  the  Netherlands; 
where,  indeed,  they  had  succeeded  in  winning  the  brill¬ 
iant  victory  of  Fontenoy.  Maria’s  own  courage  was  as 
unbroken  as  ever;  even,  she  declared,  though  she  were 
sure  of  making  peace  with  Frederick  on  the  following 
morning,  she  would  risk  a  battle  the  evening  before. 
The  satisfaction  was  hers  of  having  her  husband  declared 
emperor  at  Frankfort;  and,  in  the  festivities  that  followed, 
she  remained  in  the  background  and  refused  to  be  crowned, 
that  he  might  have  the  more  honor.  With  Saxony,  she 
formed  a  bold  plan  for  striking  a  blow  at  the  heart  of 
Frederick’s  possessions  and  for  despoiling  him  of  parts 
of  Brandenburg.  Russia,  too,  was  to  be  included  in  the 
arrangement,  and  to  be  allowed  to  cede  to  Poland  certain 
provinces  of  East  Prussia. 

New  victories  of  Frederick  frustrated  the  tempting 
plan.  He  had  been  attacked  at  the  village  of  Sohr,  not 
far  from  the  Bohemian  border,  by  an  Austrian  army  nearly 
double  the  size  of  his  own  —  the  enemy  trying  the  same 
manoeuvre  that  he  himself  had  so  successfully  executed  at 
Hohenfriedberg,  and  taking  a  new  position  under  cover  of 
the  night.  Only  with  the  rising  sun  did  he  see  the  extent 
of  the  danger,  and  the  impossibility  either  of  retreating  or 
of  remaining  in  camp.  There  was  no  alternative  but  to 


The  battle 
of  Sohr. 


144 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  battle 
of  Kessels- 
dorf. 


form  in  line  of  battle  under  the  heavy  fire  of  the  Austrian 
batteries,  and  then  to  storm  the  heights  on  which  they 
stood.  The  deserted  camp  was  plundered  by  hordes  of 
Hungarians,  Frederick’s  horses  and  dogs,  his  clothes,  his 
books,  and  even  his  flute  were  carried  off;  but  none  the 
less  his  courage  and  coolness  won  the  day.  The  enemy 
were  driven  from  height  to  height  with  terrific  losses. 
He  was  “beaten,  yes,  well  beaten,”  Prince  Charles  con¬ 
fessed  in  a  letter  to  his  brother.  The  prophecy  of  King 
George  of  England  that,  “the  king  of  Prussia  would  do 
more  in  one  day  than  Prince  Charles  in  six  months,”  had 
been  richly  fulfilled. 

But  still  more  decisive  than  Sohr,  was  an  action  that 
took  place  a  few  weeks  later  at  Kesselsdorf,  near  Dresden. 
On  hearing  of  the  plan  to  dismember  Brandenburg,  Freder¬ 
ick  had  sent  an  army  into  Saxony,  intrusting  the  supreme 
command  to  Leopold  of  Dessau  —  who  undertook  it  unwill¬ 
ingly,  complaining  of  his  age  and  infirmities.  The  old 
companion  in  arms  of  Marlborough  and  Prince  Eugene, 
himself  the  hero  of  twenty-one  battles  and  twenty-seven 
sieges,  had  been  out  of  conceit  with  the  whole  Silesian 
war,  in  which  his  advice  had  not  been  freely  asked.  But 
Frederick  urged  him  on  to  his  duty;  and  when  his  move¬ 
ments  seemed  too  slow,  did  not  hesitate  to  reprimand  him 
in  the  sternest  manner.  “ My  field  marshal,”  he  wrote, 
“  is  the  only  person  who  either  can  not,  or  will  not,  under¬ 
stand  my  plain  commands.”  He  fairly  goaded  him  into 
an  engagement,  knowing  that  all  depended  on  frustrating 
a  union  between  the  Saxons  and  the  Austrian  army  that 
had  been  defeated  at  Sohr.  The  “old  Dessauer”  did 
finally  rise  to  the  occasion ;  his  last  fight  was  one  of  the 
grandest  he  had  conducted  in  all  his  half-century  of  ser¬ 
vice.  With  22,000  men,  he  stormed  the  heights  at  Kes¬ 
selsdorf,  on  which  stood  34,000  Saxons  —  while  Prince 


THE  WARS  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


145 


Charles’s  army  of  46,000  men  had  advanced  to  a  point 
only  five  miles  off.  As  Frederick  was  ready  by  this  time 
to  unite  with  his  victorious  general  there  was  nothing  for 
the  Austrians  to  do  but  to  sue  for  peace.  They  expected, 
indeed,  a  hard  diplomatic  struggle ;  Maria’s  envoy,  Har- 
rach,  had,  he  said,  “  wished  to  tear  out  his  eyes  because, 
through  negotiations  with  this  Tamerlane,  he  would  be 
compelled  to  forge  for  his  mistress  chains  of  everlasting 
servitude.” 

But  Frederick  showed  himself  remarkably  lenient;  by 
the  Dresden  Peace,  which  was  signed  on  Christmas  morn¬ 
ing,  1745,  he  gained  neither  more  nor  less  than  he  had 
enjoyed  by  the  Peace  of  Breslau,  except  that  Saxony  had 
to  pay  a  war  indemnity  of  a  million  thalers. 

For  Maria  Theresa,  indeed,  although  Frederick  acknowl¬ 
edged  her  husband  as  emperor,  this  second  renunciation 
was  more  painful  than  the  first  had  been,  and  would  never 
have  been  signed  had  her  instructions  reached  her  envoy, 
Harrach,  in  time.  In  1742  she  had  seen  her  way  to  wrest¬ 
ing  Bavaria  from  Charles  VII. ;  now,  while  abandoning 
Silesia,  she  had  to  be  content  to  part  with  a  million  and 
a  quarter  of  Germans  with  no  compensation  to  balance  the 
preponderating  Slavic  elements  in  her  heterogeneous  do¬ 
mains.  Austria’s  r61e  as  the  first  German  power  had  been 
played  to  the  end. 

“Happy  are  they,”  wrote  Frederick  a  few  weeks  after 
the  conclusion  of  the  Dresden  Peace,  “happy  are  they 
who,  having  secured  their  own  safety,  can  tranquilly  look 
upon  the  embarrassment  and  anxiety  of  others.”  And 
again,  in  the  following  year,  “I  continually  bless  my 
present  situation,  hearing  the  storm  rage  and  seeing  the 
lightning  split  the  finest  oaks,  without  being  myself 
affected.  It  is  a  sensible  man  who  keeps  quiet  and  learns 
moderation  by  experience.  Ambition  in  the  long  run  is 


The  Peace 
of  Dresden. 


VOL.  II  —  L 


146 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  Con¬ 
gress  of 
Aix-la- 
Chapelle. 


Maria 
Theresa  and 
Elizabeth 
of  Russia. 


a  virtue  for  fools,  a  guide  that  leads  us  astray  and  lands 
us  in  an  abyss  hidden  by  flowers.” 

Once  more  a  peace  with  Frederick  meant  anything  but 
a  season  of  quiet  for  Maria  Theresa.  For  two  years  and 
more  her  war  with  France  continued,  and  Marshal  Maurice 
de  Saxe,  one  of  the  numerous  irregular  progeny  of  Augus¬ 
tus  the  Strong,  succeeded  in  wresting  from  the  incapable 
Charles  of  Lorraine  every  single  stronghold  in  the  Nether¬ 
lands,  save  Luxemburg  and  Limburg.  Even  the  presence 
in  camp  of  Louis  XV.  himself  could  not,  as  Frederick 
with  biting  sarcasm  declared,  prevent  the  progress  of  the 
French  arms.  The  pitched  battle  of  Rocoux,  fought  in 
October,  1T46,  ended  in  the  total  defeat  of  the  allies.  In 
Italy,  it  is  true,  the  Austrians  were  more  fortunate  ;  while 
the  English  were  able,  in  America  and  on  the  ocean,  to 
find  vulnerable  points  in  the  armor  of  their  enemies. 
For  the  campaign  of  1748,  preparations  had  been  made  on 
a  hitherto  unheard-of  scale.  The  forces  in  the  Netherlands 
were  to  be  raised  to  a  total  of  156,000  men,  while  90,000 
Austrians  and  Sardinians  were  to  operate  in  Italy,  and  a 
corps  of  50,000  Russians  in  the  English  pay  was  to  ad¬ 
vance  to  the  Rhine.  But,  before  all  these  armies  could 
come  into  action,  the  general  desire  for  peace  and  the 
progress  of  diplomacy  had  led  to  the  summoning  of  the 
Congress  of  Aix-la-Chapelle ;  where,  in  spite  of  the  reluc¬ 
tance  of  Austria,  —  which  alone  was  called  upon  to  make 
serious  sacrifices,  —  a  peace  was  finally  arranged.  The 
French  gave  up  their  conquests  in  the  Netherlands,  and 
Maria  Theresa  ceded  to  Don  Philip  of  Spain,  Louis  XV. ’s 
nephew,  the  duchies  of  Parma  and  Piacenza. 

Although  a  separate  clause  in  the  Treaty  of  Aix  —  forced 
through  by  England  and  France  in  the  hope  of  securing 
the  future  peace  of  Europe — guaranteed  to  Frederick  the 
possession  of  Silesia,  it  is  doubtful  if  in  her  heart  of  hearts 


THE  WARS  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


147 


Maria  Theresa  ever  really  for  a  moment  acquiesced  in  her 
fate.  “  She  forgets  that  she  is  queen,  and  breaks  into  tears 
like  a  woman,  whenever  she  sees  a  Silesian,”  an  English 
envoy  had  written  in  1743.  Of  the  efforts  she  now  made 
to  increase  her  revenues  and  to  place  the  administration 
of  her  lands  on  a  firmer  basis  we  cannot  here  speak.  Her 
surest  hope  for  the  future  seemed  to  lie  in  the  acquisition 
of  strong  allies,  and  in  this  she  was  helped  by  the  natural 
isolation  of  Prussia  and  by  the  personal  unpopularity  of 
Frederick.  France  could  not  forgive  him  for  twice  desert¬ 
ing  her  cause  and  making  his  own  advantageous  terms  with 
the  enemy;  at  the  Congress  of  Aix  the  French  envoy-in¬ 
chief,  Severin,  had  spoken  of  him  as  a  “filigree  king,”  as  a 
regular  fripon;  and,  on  his  return  to  Paris,  had  refused  to 
visit  the  Prussian  ambassador.  As  for  Russia,  the  Czarina 
had  been  on  the  point  of  invading  Frederick’s  lands  when 
the  battle  of  Kesselsdorf  turned  the  scale  in  his  favor;  even 
after  the  Peace  of  Dresden  Elizabeth  had  offered  to  furnish 
ninety  thousand  men  if  Austria  would  resume  the  war. 
This  wild,  passionate  Czarina,  who  spent  her  nights  in 
drunken  orgies,  and  who  was  egged  on  by  Frederick’s  bitter 
enemy,  Bestucheff,  hated  the  Prussian  king  with  an  un¬ 
holy  hate.  Sarcastic  and  malicious  enough  were  the  re¬ 
marks  he  had  often  made  about  her;  and  Bestucheff,  who 
was  at  the  same  time  her  prime  minister  and  the  father- 
in-law  of  her  unacknowledged  daughter,  found  it  to  his 
interest  to  have  his  agents  carefully  retail  them  in  her  ear. 
Two  lackeys  who  had  left  Frederick’s  service  for  that  of 
the  Russian  court  were  among  the  tale-bearers,  as  were  also 
the  English  and  French  ambassadors.  More  self-respect¬ 
ing  men,  indeed  —  like  Count  Kayserling,  the  Russian  en¬ 
voy  to  Berlin — would  not  be  concerned  in  the  foul  business, 
and  flatly  refused  to  obey  the  orders  which  bade  them  act 
as  scavengers  for  stray  bits  of  personal  gossip  and  slander. 


148 


A  SHORT  HISTGAx 


OF  GERMANY 


Danger  for 
Frederick. 


Traditional 

alliances. 


In  the  year  after  the  Treaty  of  Aix,  an  attempt,  on  Bes- 
tucheff’s  part,  to  set  aside  the  succession  of  Frederick’s 
brother-in-law,  the  crown  prince  of  Sweden,  —  who,  in¬ 
deed,  under  altered  circumstances,  had  had  Russia  herself 
to  thank  for  his  elevation,  —  led  to  the  very  verge  of  a  Prus- 
sian-Russian  war.  “  My  Swedish  sister  awaits  a  visit  this 
year  which  will  not  be  very  agreeable  to  her,'’  wrote  Fred¬ 
erick  in  the  spring  of  1749;  and  again,  to  Frederike  Ulrica 
herself,  “We  must  do  our  best  to  keep  on  our  guard  and 
to  be  prepared  for  the  worst  that  can  happen.”  His  energy 
in  mobilizing  his  forces  did  much  to  avert  the  catastrophe; 
and  Elizabeth,  finding  that  France  was  inclined  to  help 
Sweden,  and  that  Maria  Theresa  would  only  join  in  the 
struggle  on  conditions  dictated  by  her  own  interest  in 
Silesia,  desisted  from  her  warlike  plans  at  the  eleventh 
hour.  But  Frederick  knew  well  that  the  danger  was  only 
temporarily  averted;  four  or  five  years  of  peace,  he  de¬ 
clared,  and  he  should  find  himself  once  more  attacked.  He 
little  knew  what  a  general  avalanche  the  Russian- Austrian 
intrigues  —  aided  by  that  French-English  struggle  which 
had  started  with  the  American  boundary  disputes  and  was 
resolving  itself,  in  Europe,  into  a  fight  for  Hanover  — 
were  to  bring  down  about  his  ears. 

In  the  interval  the  world  was  to  see  a  shifting  of  alli¬ 
ances  which  belongs  to  the  seven  wonders  of  diplomatic 
history.  Austria,  for  two  hundred  years,  had  been  the 
constant  enemy  of  France.  The  Emperor  Charles  V.  had 
fought  against  Francis  I.  and  Henry  II. ;  Ferdinand  II. 
and  Ferdinand  III.  against  Richelieu’s  generals;  Leo¬ 
pold  I.,  Joseph  I.,  and  Charles  VI.  in  repeated  wars 
against  Louis  XIV. ;  Maria  Theresa  herself,  for  seven 
years,  against  the  present  king.  To  Prussia,  on  the  other 
hand,  from  the  days  when  Frederick  William  I.  broke  off 
the  double  marriage  project  and  expressed  his  opinions 


THE  WARS  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


149 


so  freely  about  George  II.,  England  had  been  an  object  of 
hatred.  In  the  Austrian  succession  war,  George’s  subsi¬ 
dies,  his  armies,  even  his  own  mediocre  military  talents, 
had  been  at  the  service  of  Maria  Theresa.  Even  after  the 
Peace  of  Aix  it  had  more  than  once  come  to  the  verge  of 
a  rupture  with  Frederick:  the  latter,  in  1751,  in  spite  of 
Podewils’s  frightened  “What  will  your  uncle  say?”  had 
chosen  one  of  the  heads  of  the  Jacobites,  a  man  whom  the 
English  government  had  pronounced  a  rebel  and  an  out¬ 
law,  to  be  Prussia’s  official  representative  in  Paris.  And 
when  England,  which,  in  the  previous  war,  had  captured 
Prussian  vessels  carrying  French  merchandise,  persist¬ 
ently  refused  compensation,  Frederick,  in  1752,  retali¬ 
ated  by  retaining  the  interest  on  the  Silesian  debt,  which 
an  English  syndicate  had  assumed.  In  London  the  excite¬ 
ment  was  intense ;  the  wildest  rumors  gained  ground,  and 
active  preparations  were  made  for  the  defence  of  Hanover 
—  which,  it  was  believed,  would  be  immediately  attacked. 
Indeed,  in  the  following  year,  when,  after  the  defeat  of 
George  Washington  at  Fort  Duquesne,  the  prospect  of  a 
long  and  bitter  struggle  between  England  and  France 
became  assured,  Frederick  urged  this  very  measure  on  the 
French  ambassador,  Latouche.  “That  is  the  surest  means 

of  making  this - [George  II.]  change  his  tune,”  he 

said;  employing  a  “cavalier-like  epithet,”  with  regard  to 
his  uncle,  which  Latouche  found  too  strong  to  report  to 
his  own  government. 

And  yet,  after  all,  toward  the  autumn  of  1755,  Freder¬ 
ick  began  to  veer  round  to  the  side  of  England:  his 
reasons  for  so  abrupt  a  change  of  policy  being,  firstly, 
that  the  French  expected  too  much  of  him  —  that,  in  fact, 
they  wished  “  to  pile  upon  their  allies  the  whole  burden 
of  the  war  and  keep  their  own  hands  free  ”;  and,  secondly, 
the  circumstance  that  Russia  was  making  dangerous  over- 


* 


The  Con¬ 
vention  of 

West¬ 

minster. 


150 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  first 
Treaty  of 
Versailles. 


tures  to  England.  The  time  had  not  yet  come  when 
Frederick  could  face  the  idea  of  having  Prussia,  with  its 
scanty  population  of  five  millions,  carry  on  a  war  against 
three  great  powers,  with  only  one  single  slippery  ally 
like  France.  It  was  probably  true,  what  Lord  Hyndford 
had  once  said,  that  he  feared  Russia  more  than  God.  In 
proportion,  therefore,  as  the  Russian -English  relations 
grew  warm  or  cold,  he  regulated  his  conduct  toward 
George  II. ;  well  knowing  that,  by  her  position,  Prussia 
was  better  able  than  any  other  power  to  accomplish  the 
English  king’s  desire,  and  insure  the  safety  of  his  Hano¬ 
verian  possessions. 

Finally,  early  in  1T56,  after  Russia  had  already  agreed 
to  furnish  seventy  thousand  men,  who  were  to  be  sup¬ 
ported  by  English  subsidies,  Frederick  closed  an  alliance 
with  George.  The  Convention  of  Westminster  provided 
for  firm  peace  and  friendship  between  Prussia  and  Eng¬ 
land,  and  stipulated  that  each  should  turn  against  any 
enemy  attacking  the  lands  of  the  other.  A  united  army 
was  to  oppose  any  foreign  power  that  should  presume  to 
force  its  way  on  to  German  ground.  This  agreement, 
this  one  little  stroke  of  the  pen,  Frederick  hoped,  would 
reduce  “the  queen  of  Hungary  to  madness,  Saxony  to 
insignificance,  and  Russia  to  despair.” 

Parallel  with  these  English-Prussian  negotiations  had 
gone  those  of  Maria  Theresa  with  France.  The  bait 
offered  to  the  latter  power  was  a  part  of  the  Austrian 
Netherlands  for  Louis  XV.  ’s  nephew,  — who  would  then  be 
asked  to  renounce  Parma  and  Piacenza,  — and  the  support 
of  another  relative  of  the  French  king,  Prince  Conti,  as 
candidate  for  the  Polish  throne.  In  return  for  these  favors, 
the  French  court  was  to  help  the  empress  to  gratify  the 
ruling  passion  of  her  life,  and  reduce  Prussia  to  the  limits 
it  had  occupied  before  the  Thirty  Years’  War.  The  hated 


THE  WARS  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  151 

king  was  to  become  once  more  a  mere  margrave.  All  that 
was  needed  was  French  subsidies;  fighters  enough  could 
be  gained  by  allowing  Frederick’s  natural  enemies  to  rend 
and  rive  at  the  body  of  his  doomed  state.  Saxony  was  to 
have  Magdeburg;  Sweden,  Stettin  and  Further  Pome¬ 
rania;  the  Palatinate,  Cleves  and  Mark;  the  Franconian 
Circle,  Ansbach  and  Baireuth. 

The  news  that  Frederick  had  signed  the  Treaty  of  West¬ 
minster  found  France  still  undecided,  but  soon  weighed 
down  the  balance  in  Austria’s  favor.  Kaunitz,  the  dash¬ 
ing  new  minister,  whose  progressive  policy  was  so  hated 
at  Vienna  by  all  save  the  empress  herself,  had  done  his 
work  well  at  the  Parisian  court.  No  means  had  been  left 
untried  of  influencing  the  weak  voluptuary  who  sat  on 
the  throne  of  the  Bourbons.  Kaunitz  and  his  successor  in 
Paris,  Starhemberg,  had  succeeded  in  winning  the  favor  of 
Madame  de  Pompadour,  —  the  graceful  and  beautiful,  but 
coarse-minded  and  unscrupulous,  mistress  of  the  king.  It 
is  not  true  —  at  least  the  empress  herself  indignantly 
denied  the  rumor  —  that  Maria  Theresa  went  so  far  as  to 
write  to  the  Pompadour  a  personal  letter  and  to  address 
her  as  “sister”  and  “cousin”;  nor  is  it  true,  in  spite  of 
anecdotes  which  seem  to  prove  the  contrary,  that  Freder¬ 
ick  had  systematically  neglected  this  person  of  ignomin¬ 
ious  birth.  But  certainly  the  empress  had  sent  presents 
and  polite  messages,  while  Frederick  in  some  way  or  other 
had  incurred  the  Pompadour’s  dislike.  The  latter  boasted 
herself,  and  probably  with  right,  that  the  preliminary 
treaties  signed  at  Versailles,  in  May,  1756,  wTere  essen¬ 
tially  her  own  work.  To  be  sure,  Austria  had  not  as  yet 
gained  all  that  she  desired.  The  treaty  was  merely  defen¬ 
sive;  and  Louis  XV.  objected  to  depriving  Prussia  of 
more  than  Silesia,  besides  desiring  the  whole  of  the 
Netherlands  for  France. 


152  v 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Frederick 
learns  the 
designs  of 
his  enemies. 


Frederick  had  hoped  that  her  own  treaty  with  England 
would  prevent  Russia  from  making  war  on  a  power  that 
had  just  become  the  closest  ally  of  the  English,  but  he  was 
mistaken.  Elizabeth  was  more  eager  to  attack  him  than  was 
even  Maria  Theresa.  When  the  latter’s  envoy  broached 
the  subject  the  Czarina  replied  that  she  had  been  on  the 
very  point  of  suggesting  an  offensive  alliance.  Her  dis¬ 
appointment  was  great  when  Austria,  for  the  reason  that 
France  had  not  yet  been  won  for  an  aggressive  policy, 
determined  to  postpone  the  campaign  until  the  following 
spring.  Bestucheff,  indeed,  was  not  so  warlike  as  his 
mistress.  Elizabeth  was  ill  with  strange  maladies.  It 
seemed  not  unlikely  that  she  would  soon  die ;  and  regard 
for  the  “rising  sun”  prompted  the  wary  minister  not  to 
strike  too  hostile  an  attitude  either  toward  Prussia  or 
toward  England. 

Frederick  was  well  informed  of  all  the  schemes  that 
were  being  forged  against  him :  he  had  in  his  pay  a  mem¬ 
ber  of  the  Saxon  chancery  —  a  trusted  member,  who  sup¬ 
plied  him  with  copies  of  the  most  secret  documents.  From 
various  directions,  too,  he  received  words  of  warning  and 
advice ;  nor  did  he  scruple  to  have  the  Berlin  post-office 
open  letters  on  their  way  from  St.  Petersburg  to  England 
and  Holland.  At  last  a  Dutch  ambassador,  whose  cor¬ 
respondence  had  been  read,  but  only  half  understood, 
volunteered  the  positive  information  that  Austria  was 
preparing  to  put  eighty  thousand,  Russia  one  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand,  men  in  the  field.  On  one  point  at 
least  Frederick  was  fully  determined:  he  would  not  meet 
his  fate  like  a  lamb  led  to  the  slaughter.  When  hos¬ 
tilities  should  open  he  meant  to  make  the  first  move. 
“There  is  no  help  for  it,”  he  declared  to  Mitchell,  the 
English  envoy;  “if  this  lady” —  pointing  to  a  portrait  of 
Maria  Theresa  which  hung  on  the  wall  —  “  wishes  war,  she 


THE  WARS  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


153 


shall  have  it  soon.”  “Look  into  my  face,”  he  had  said  a 
moment  before  to  the  same  personage ;  “  does  my  nose  look 
like  one  at  which  fingers  can  be  wagged  ?  By  God,  I  will 
not  stand  it!  ”  Mitchell  had  answered,  in  a  manner  not 
displeasing  to  the  king,  that  indeed  patience  and  submis¬ 
siveness  were  not  exactly  to  be  counted  among  the  qualities 
for  which  he  was  distinguished. 

In  order  to  bring  matters  to  a  climax,  Frederick  de¬ 
spatched  one  messenger  after  another  to  Vienna  with  cate¬ 
gorical  questions.  First,  what  was  the  meaning  of  the 
movements  of  the  troops  in  Bohemia  and  Moravia;  were 
these  preparations  being  made  with  a  view  to  an  attack 
upon  himself?  Maria’s  answer  was  purposely  evasive 
and  unsatisfactory;  she  wished  to  provoke  Frederick  and 
make  him  the  aggressor ;  only  then  could  she  hope  for  the 
full  benefit  of  her  treaty  with  France.  Hard  and  fast  on 
the  heels  of  the  first  envoy,  came  a  second,  requesting  a 
straightforward  answer  as  to  whether  the  empress  intended 
to  attack  the  king  of  Prussia  either  in  the  present  or  the 
following  year.  A  few  days  later,  Frederick  wrote  on  the 
margin  of  his  military  instructions  to  Duke  Ferdinand  of 
Brunswick :  “  The  answer  has  come  and  is  good  for  noth¬ 
ing.”  For  the  third  time,  he  sent  to  say  that  he  was  cer¬ 
tain  now  of  the  evil  intentions  of  the  Vienna  court;  his 
troops  were  already  on  the  march,  but  he  would  order  them 
to  turn  back  if  the  empress  would  give  him  the  assurance 
he  had  latterly  demanded. 

One  imperative  duty  Frederick  felt  called  upon  to  per¬ 
form  before  throwing  his  forces  against  the  main  Austrian 
army:  the  Saxon  court  which,  as  he  knew  from  the  testi¬ 
mony  of  its  own  archives,  had  tried  to  egg  on  all  the  other 
powers  against  him,  and  which,  beyond  a  doubt,  meant  to 
follow  Bestucheff’s  advice  and  take  part  in  the  struggle 
“so  soon  as  the  rider  should  begin  to  waver  in  the  saddle,” 


An  ultima¬ 
tum  sent  to 
Vienna. 


Frederick’s 
occupation 
of  Saxony. 


154 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Capitula¬ 
tion  of  the 
Saxons. 


was  first  to  be  rendered  harmless.  Only  by  occupying  the 
electorate  could  proper  communications  be  kept  up  with 
Berlin;  in  no  other  way  could  the  forces  Frederick  meant 
to  throw  into  Bohemia  and  Moravia  be  secured  from  ugly 
surprises.  The  only  misfortune  was  that  the  cowardly 
king,  Augustus  III.,  did  not  succeed  in  making  his  escape 
from  the  land.  The  commander  of  the  body-guards  had 
been  asked  if  he  could  guarantee  that  no  spent  ball  should 
strike  the  royal  person;  and,  on  his  giving  a  negative 
answer,  the  attempt  was  abandoned,  and  Augustus,  with 
his  army,  withdrew  to  an  almost  impregnable  position  in 
Saxon  Switzerland,  between  Pirna  and  the  Konigstein. 
Prussian  troops  marched  into  Dresden,  and,  in  spite  of  the 
fierce  resistance  of  the  queen,  Maria  Josepha,  who  actually 
threw  her  person  in  the  way,  forced  open  the  door  of  the 
room  in  the  palace  where  the  archives  were  kept,  selected 
three  bags  full  of  compromising  documents,  and  sent  them 
off  to  Berlin  to  be  published  for  the  benefit  of  Europe. 
An  ultimatum  was  sent  to  the  commanding  general,  Ar- 
nim,  to  the  effect  that  the  whole  Saxon  army  must  take 
the  oath  of  allegiance  to  the  Prussian  king.  To  Arnim’s 
objection  that  no  example  of  such  a  thing  could  be  found 
in  history,  “Oh,  yes,  there  can,”  Frederick  answered; 
“  and  even  if  there  could  not,  I  would  like  you  to  know 
that  I  pride  myself  on  being  somewhat  original.” 

An  Austrian  army,  under  General  Browne,  who  pro¬ 
posed  to  relieve  the  Saxons  in  Pirna,  was  met  on  the  left 
bank  of  the  Elbe,  at  Lobositz ;  and  a  battle  took  place 
among  the  steep  vine-clad  hills  (October  1,  1756).  The 
Prussian  troops,  to  use  Frederick’s  own  expression,  per¬ 
formed  “miracles  of  bravery,”  but  the  enemy,  too,  proved 
that  they  were  “no  longer  the  old  Austrians.”  The 
chief  advantage  of  the  slight  victory  was  that  the  be¬ 
leaguered  army  lost  hope  and  was  soon  brought  to  sub- 


THE  WARS  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


155 


mission,  the  capitulation  being  signed  on  the  15th  of 
October.  The  officers  were  released  on  parole  and  the 
common  soldiers  incorporated  in  the  Prussian  army,  — 
whereby  the  fatal  mistake  was  made,  as  Frederick  him¬ 
self  confessed,  of  not  dissolving  the  regiments  and  appor¬ 
tioning  the  men  among  loyal  battalions,  but  of  simply 
placing  them,  as  they  were,  under  Prussian  commanders. 
No  wonder  they  deserted  by  thousands,  and  thus  belied 
the  expectation  that,  being  Protestants,  they  would  serve 
more  willingly  under  Frederick  than  under  their  own 
Catholic  king.  On  the  whole,  this  Saxon  campaign  had 
been  unfortunate.  Seven  precious  weeks  had  been  wasted 
in  starving  out  a  camp  that  could  only  have  been  taken 
with  great  loss  of  life ;  and  the  great  advantage  of  keeping 
the  members  of  the  coalition  as  far  apart  as  possible  had 
thus  been  forfeited.  Now,  the  season  was  so  advanced  and 
so  uncommonly  cold  that  nothing  remained  but  to  go  into 
winter  quarters,  —  Saxony,  meanwhile,  being  placed  com¬ 
pletely  under  Prussian  administration,  and  the  taxes  of 
her  subjects  going  to  the  uses  of  her  conqueror. 

The  king  of  France  had  heard  the  news  of  the  humilia¬ 
tion  of  his  friend,  the  king  of  Poland,  with  rage  and  with 
oaths  of  vengeance.  Yet  Louis  XV.  wavered  long  before 
committing  himself  finally  to  Maria  Theresa’s  scheme  of 
destruction.  It  was  one  year  to  a  day  from  the  signing 
of  the  first  Versailles  Treaty,  before  the  second,  offensive, 
one  was  concluded.  Then,  indeed,  greed  of  Belgian  land, 
the  Pompadour’s  intrigues,  and  Louis’s  own  ridiculous 
pretension  to  be  the  champion  of  the  true  religion  against 
the  assaults  of  a  heretic  and  madman,  induced  France  to 
go  to  the  greatest  lengths  that  even  Austria  could  have 
desired.  Instead  of  mere  subsidies,  Louis  was  to  furnish 
one  hundred  and  fifteen  thousand  men.  Prussia  was  to 
be  dismembered  and  the  spoils  divided  in  all  directions. 


The  second 
Treaty  of 
Versailles. 


156 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Frederick 

isolated. 


The  very  least  of  the  demands  of  the  allies  were  to  include 
the  whole  Cleves  heritage,  Silesia,  Crossen,  Magdeburg, 
Halberstadt,  and  the  share  of  Swedish  Pomerania  ac¬ 
quired  a  generation  before  by  Frederick  William  I. 
Maria  Theresa  and  Elizabeth  had  arranged,  in  addition, 
that  Frederick  should  lose  the  very  nucleus  of  his  royal 
power,  —  the  province  of  East  Prussia ;  it  was  to  go  to 
Poland,  which,  in  turn,  was  to  cede  to  Russia  Courland 
and  Semgallen.  To  be  sure,  Maria’s  envoy,  Esterhazy, 
was  reminded  in  St.  Petersburg  of  the  homely  proverb, 
“  Catch  your  hare  before  you  skin  him  ” ;  but  so  completely 
did  Frederick  seem  to  be  rushing  into  the  toils  that  a  little 
confidence  was  pardonable.  Russia  was  not  only  to  send 
an  army  through  Poland,  but  her  fleet  was  to  operate  in 
the  Baltic;  while  Sweden,  Frederick’s  only  hope  in  the 
North,  was  now  drawn  into  the  alliance  against  him,  and, 
in  return  for  French  subsidies,  agreed  to  furnish  twenty 
thousand  men.  Moreover,  Austria,  at  the  Diet  of  Ratis- 
bon,  succeeded  in  drawing  over  to  her  side  sixty  out  of 
eighty-six  of  the  estates  of  the  empire,  by  which  majority 
the  Diet  voted  “imperial  execution”  against  the  wanton 
invader  of  Saxony. 

Prussia’s  only  hope  seemed  to  lie  in  the  prospect  of 
English  aid, —  a  prospect  which,  for  the  present  at  least, 
proved  completely  illusory.  England  had  wars  to  wage 
in  all  parts  of  the  world;  and  in  this  very  year  was  hard 
pressed  both  in  India  and  in  America.  Frederick  was 
keenly  alive  to  the  perils  of  his  situation.  He  likened 
himself  to  a  stag  on  which  a  “  pack  of  kings  and  princes  ” 
had  been  let  loose,  or  to  Orpheus  pursued  by  Maenads  — 
represented  by  the  two  empresses  and  the  Pompadour. 
Once  more,  as  in  1740,  he  issued  the  most  stringent  com¬ 
mands  as  to  what  should  happen  should  he  die  or  fall 
into  captivity;  in  the  latter  case  even  his  own  letters  and 


THE  WARS  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


157 


entreaties  were  to  be  disregarded.  But  his  danger  height¬ 
ened  instead  of  dulling  his  intelligence,  and  he  well  de¬ 
served  what  Napoleon  Bonaparte  considered  “the  highest 
praise  that  one  can  pay  to  his  character,”  namely,  that 
he  “was  especially  great  in  decisive  moments.”  In  pub¬ 
lic  he  never  repined;  “the  whole  army  reads  the  face  of 
its  commander,”  he  once  wrote;  “a  general  must  be  like 
an  actor.”  But  even  in  his  heart  of  hearts  he  seems  to 
have  possessed  a  steady  beacon-light  of  hope.  “  Un  certo 
non  so  che ,”  he  wrote  to  the  Margravine  of  Baireuth, 

“seems  to  tell  me  that  all  will  go  perfectly  well.”  And 
again,  at  the  time  of  the  last  visit  he  was  destined  to 
make  to  his  own  capital  for  the  space  of  more  than  six 
terrible  years :  “  I  have  a  presentiment  that  I  shall  neither 
be  killed  nor  wounded;  I  confess,  however,  that,  should 
things  turn  out  badly,  I  should  a  hundred  times  prefer 
death  to  the  fate  that  would  await  me.  You  know  my 
enemies;  you  can  judge  what  I  should  have  to  swallow 
in  the  way  of  humiliations !  ” 

One  great  advantage  Frederick  possessed  which  out-  Advantages 
weighed  much  numerical  superiority :  he  was  absolute  lord  of  abso_ 
and  master,  not  only  of  his  army,  but  also  of  the  resources  lutlsm‘ 
of  his  land.  He  could,  and  did,  make  forced  loans,  antici¬ 
pate  taxes,  and  even  inflate  the  currency  to  meet  immedi¬ 
ate  needs.  Every  plan  of  the  Austrians,  on  the  other 
hand,  had  to  be  made  with  reference,  not  only  to  Charles 
of  Lorraine,  the  incompetent  commander-in-chief,  but  also 
to  Maria  Theresa,  to  her  husband,  and  to  a  permanent  war 
council  in  Vienna.  And  at  the  side  of  the  Prussian  king, 
himself  assuredly  no  mean  general,  there  stood  the  brav¬ 
est  and  most  experienced  commander  in  Europe, —  Curt 
von  Schwerin,  the  victor  of  Mollwitz,  once  the  companion 
in  arms  of  a  Marlborough,  a  Eugene,  and  a  Charles  XII. 

The  queen  of  Hungary  will  have  two  “nice  boys  ”  to  deal 


158 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  battle 

near 

Prague. 


with,  Frederick  had  said,  meaning  himself  and  Schwerin. 
So  widespread  was  the  latter’s  fame  that,  in  1745,  Louis 
XV.  had  offered  to  place  him  in  command  of  one  of  his 
armies.  Not  the  least  of  Schwerin’s  merits  was  his  zeal 
in  attending  to  the  needs,  wants,  and  comforts  of  his  sol¬ 
diers,  while  at  the  same  time  preserving  the  strictest  order 
and  discipline.  “  Never  will  the  army  forget,  ”  wrote  Fred¬ 
erick,  sixteen  years  after  his  great  general’s  death,  44  that 
it  has  been  under  the  command  of  a  Marshal  Schwerin.” 

In  the  enforced  idleness  of  the  winter  quarters  in  Dres¬ 
den,  Frederick  spent  his  time  in  studying  the  great  cam¬ 
paigns  of  Turenne,  Eugene,  and  Marlborough;  he  visited 
the  field  of  Liitzen,  where  Gustavus  Adolphus  had  found 
his  death.  All  his  thoughts  and  energies  were  bent  on 
how  to  alimieren  the  Austrians  —  to  drive  them  into  an 
abyss  of  ruin  and  despair  before  the  advent  of  the  French 
and  the  Russians.  After  long  consultations  with  Schwerin 
and  with  one  whom  he  esteemed  almost  as  highly,  Winter- 
feldt,  he  determined  to  make  a  dash  at  the  enemy’s  camp 
near  Koniggratz, —  a  daring  resolve  considering  that  the 
supplies  were  insufficient  and  that,  on  account  of  the 
earliness  of  the  season,  not  even  grass  could  be  obtained 
for  the  horses. 

The  Austrians  had  received  warning  of  Frederick’s  in¬ 
tention,  but,  in  their  blindness,  had  held  the  report  for  a 
ruse  of  war.  Now,  their  sole  alternative  was  to  retreat  to 
the  hills  near  Prague,  leaving  behind  them  stores  of  ines¬ 
timable  value.  They  took  up  a  strong  position  on  the  crest 
of  the  Ziscaberg,  the  approach  of  the  Prussians  being  ren¬ 
dered  more  difficult  by  the  steepness  of  the  ascent,  on  the 
one  side,  and  by  the  slimy  and  treacherous  nature  of  the 
ground  upon  the  other.  But  on  they  came,  floundering 
through  the  beds  of  empty  fish-ponds;  and  finally,  with 
desperate  bravery,  they  put  the  enemy  to  flight,  mortally 


THE  WARS  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


159 


wounding  the  most  capable  Austrian  general,  Browne, 
and  driving  Prince  Charles  into  such  a  panic  that  he  fell 
unconscious  with  a  spasm  of  the  heart.  But  the  Prussian 
losses,  too,  were  terrific :  fiery  old  Schwerin  himself,  who, 
with  a  cry  of  “This  way,  my  children!  ”  had  seized  a  flag 
and  ridden  in  front  of  his  battalion,  was  fatally  pierced 
by  a  bullet  —  a  costly  sacrifice  that  filled  Frederick  with 
pain,  and  that,  to  use  his  own  words,  “withered  the 
laurels  of  victory.”  Rather,  he  declared,  would  he  have 
lost  ten  thousand  men. 

Had  the  old  hero  lived  a  few  days  longer,  he  would  The  defeat 
doubtless  have  hindered  his  beloved  king  from  one  of  the  at  Kolin- 
most  disastrous  steps  of  his  life.  Leaving  the  bulk  of  his 
army  to  coop  up  the  Austrians  in  Prague,  Frederick 
moved,  with  a  small  detachment,  to  join  the  Duke  of 
Bevern,  and  cut  off  General  Daun,  who  was  marching  to 
the  city’s  relief.  He  would  not  believe  the  reports  as  to 
the  strength  of  Daun’s  army,  and  determined  to  give  him 
battle  at  once.  When  he  drew  up  against  him,  near  the 
small  town  of  Kolin,  he  found  himself  outnumbered  by  two 
to  one.  Even  then,  the  Austrians  were  all  but  driven  to 
retreat ;  the  day  would  not  have  been  lost  but  for  dis¬ 
obedience  to  Frederick’s  distinct  command  that  one  whole 
wing  should  remain  in  reserve.  “With  four  fresh  bat¬ 
talions,”  he  declared  later,  “I  could  have  won  the  engage¬ 
ment.”  As  it  was,  out  of  all  his  flying  soldiers  he  could' 
only  rally  some  forty  men,  with  whom  he  attempted  to 
make  a  charge.  “Will  your  Majesty  try  to  take  the  bat¬ 
tery  alone?”  cried  one  of  his  adjutants,  inducing  him 
finally  to  desist  from  the  attempt  and  to  give  the  order  for 
a  general  retreat.  Nearly  two-thirds  of  his  infantry  were 
dead  or  wounded,  or  prisoners  in  the  hands  of  the  enemy. 

Never  were  hopes  more  completely  crushed  than  by  the 
outcome  of  this  battle.  The  army  before  Prague  would  not 


160 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  Con¬ 
vention  of 
Kloster- 
Zeven. 


believe  the  news,  until  they  saw  the  dejected  bearing  and 
sunken  eyes  of  their  king.  Well  might  the  victorious 
enemy  chant  their  Ambrosian  hymns;  and  well  might 
Maria  Theresa  decree  rewards  to  her  soldiers  and  found  an 
order,  in  her  own  name,  of  which  her  successful  general 
was  the  first  recipient.  Kolin  decided  the  whole  Bohe¬ 
mian  campaign.  Crestfallen  to  the  last  degree,  Frederick 
determined  to  retire  to  Silesia;  and  when,  at  last,  he 
rallied  his  army  in  a  place  of  safety,  some  40,000  men 
failed  to  answer  to  the  roll-call.  A  corps,  which  he  had 
intrusted  to  his  brother,  Augustus  William,  the  heir 
apparent  to  the  Prussian  throne,  had  suffered  terrible 
losses  on  account  of  the  indecision  and  incapacity  of  its 
leader:  stinging  and  cruel  were  the  rebukes  that  Fred¬ 
erick  administered;  he  could  be  as  harsh  as  ever  his  own 
father  had  been  when  occasion  demanded.  “You  may, 
if  you  like,  command  a  harem/’  he  wrote,  “but  so  long 
as  I  live  I  will  never  trust  you  with  the  command  over 
ten  men!  ”  He  bade  his  own  soldiers  hold  no  intercourse 
with  those  which  his  brother  had  been  leading.  Fairly 
crushed,  mentally  and  physically,  the  poor  prince  wasted 
away,  and  died  broken-hearted  within  a  few  months. 

It  was,  indeed,  no  time  for  leniency,  for  the  general 
situation  seemed  absolutely  hopeless.  “In  these  unhappy 
times,”  wrote  Frederick  to  D’Argens,  “one  needs  entrails 
Aof  iron  and  a  heart  of  bronze.”  To  meet  nearly  100,000 
Russians  in  East  Prussia  only  24,000  men  were  available; 
Marshal  Lehwaldt  gave  battle  at  Gross- Jagerndorf,  but 
his  defeat  was  a  foregone  conclusion.  It  was  much  to  his 
credit  that  he  was  able  to  beat  an  orderly  retreat,  and 
Frederick  had  nothing  but  praise  for  his  endeavors;  to 
reenforce  him  in  any  way  was  beyond  his  power.  Against 
the  Swedish  battalions  that  gathered  in  Stralsund,  some 
22,000  strong,  there  could  only  be  opposed  some  few  vol- 


THE  WARS  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  161 

unteers.  The  fortress  of  Peenemiinde  was  soon  forced  to 
surrender,  while  the  fate  of  Stettin  hung  wavering  in  the 
balance.  Thus  from  all  quarters  the  tide  of  invasion  rolled 
relentlessly  in.  The  enemy  could  recruit  its  armies  from 
a  population  of  some  60,000,000,  while  4,500,000  was  all 
that  Prussia  could  boast.  England,  indeed,  was  Freder¬ 
ick’s  ally;  but  no  British  soldiers  were  despatched  to  his 
aid.  An  army  of  nearly  50,000  Hanoverians  and  Hessians 
had  been  placed  under  the  Duke  of  Cumberland  for  the 
sake  of  protecting  the  electorate  against  the  attack  of 
three  times  as  many  French;  but  this  favorite  son  of 
George  II.  was  absolutely  lacking  in  military  talents,  and 
withdrew,  in  a  panic,  from  his  only  serious  engagement,  at 
Hastenbeck,  at  a  time  when  the  advantage  was  all  on  his 
own  side.  Driven  from  point  to  point,  he  finally  ran  his 
army  into  a  regular  cul  de  sac ,  where  he  was  forced  to 
surrender  and  to  sign  the  disgraceful  Convention  of  Klos- 
ter-Zeven.  Fortunately,  to  spare  his  feelings,  the  French 
commander  had  called  it  a  convention,  and  not  a  capitula¬ 
tion,  —  the  difference  being  that  the  one  required  ratifica¬ 
tion,  the  other  not. 

It  was  in  Frederick’s  favor  that,  although  the  empire,  sym- 
as  a  whole,  had  brought  some  60,000  men  into  the  field,  patky  of 
these  forces  were  of  the  worst  possible  material,  and  not 
over  loyal  to  their  cause.  Large  as  was  the  majority  of  the  erick 
delegates  that  had  voted  for  imperial  execution,  the  people 
of  Germany,  as  a  whole,  sympathized  with  Frederick. 

The  latter’s  envoy  at  the  Diet,  Plotho,  became  a  popular 
hero  for  the  courageous  manner  in  which  he  received  the 
imperial  notary  who  tried  to  serve  upon  him  the  formal 
citation  by  which  his  master,  the  “  Margrave  of  Branden¬ 
burg,”  was  bidden  to  appear  within  two  months  and  show 
cause  why  he  should  not  be  placed  in  the  greater  ban  of 
the  empire  and  lose  all  his  fiefs,  privileges,  liberties,  and 


VOL.  II - M 


The  great 
battle  of 
Rossbach. 


162  A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

expectations.  The  notary  himself  has  left  a  description 
of  how  Plotho  seized  him  by  the  robe,  stuffed  the  citation 
“between  his  coat,”  forced  him  backward  out  of  the  room, 
and  called  to  two  of  his  lackeys  to  “  pitch  him  down  the 
stairs.”  Goethe  has  told  how,  seven  years  later,  at  the 
coronation  at  Frankfort,  Plotho  was  still  the  cynosure  of 
all  eyes,  and  how  respect  for  the  Hapsburgs  could  scarcely 
prevent  the  murmurs  of  approbation  from  breaking  out 
into  open  applause.  The  ban  against  Frederick  was 
never  formally  published,  nor  was  the  emperor  even  in  a 
position  to  procure  Plotho’s  removal. 

Frederick,  in  the  meantime,  leaving  the  Duke  of  Bevern, 
with  the  bulk  of  the  army,  in  Silesia  to  keep  the  Aus¬ 
trians  in  check,  had  marched  off  to  Thuringia.  He  tried  to 
entice  Soubise,  who  commanded  a  second  French  army, 
and  Hildburghausen,  under  whom  were  the  contingents 
of  the  empire,  to  give  him  battle.  He  would  gladly  in 
these  days  have  made  peace  with  the  French  on  any  honor¬ 
able  terms,  and  his  agents  were  instructed  to  offer  Madame 
de  Pompadour  half  a  million  thalers,  or  even  the  princi¬ 
palities  of  Valengin  and  Neuenburg,  if  she  would  use  her 
good  offices  in  Prussia’s  favor.  But  nothing  came  of  the 
endeavor,  as  Louis  XV.  refused  to  treat  without  his  allies. 
Soubise  and  Hildburghausen  kept  out  of  the  path  of 
Frederick,  who  was  forced  to  waste  his  time  in  marches 
and  countermarches,  while  one  piece  of  bad  tidings  after 
another  rained  upon  him.  In  a  skirmish  near  Gorlitz,  his 
best-loved  general,  Winterfeldt,  was  killed;  while  a  small 
corps,  under  the  Austrian  Haddik,  entered  Berlin  and  laid 
it  under  contribution.  A  mere  fleeting  visit,  indeed, 
in  which  little  damage  was  done.  From  some  unknown 
cause,  Haddik  refrained  even  from  blowing  up  the  Prus¬ 
sian  powder  magazines,  and  his  withdrawal  the  next  day 
furthered  Frederick’s  cause  in  an  unexpected  manner. 


THE  WARS  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


163 


The  latter’s  endeavor  to  intercept  Haddik  was  looked 
upon  as  a  retreat  by  Soubise  and  Hildburghausen ;  they 
came  out  from  among  the  Thuringian  hills,  intending  to 
liberate  Saxony.  Then  Frederick  turned,  eager  to  give 
them  battle,  and  took  up  a  strong  position  at  Rossbach  — 
not  far  from  the  great  Leipzig  plain,  where  the  battles  of 
Breitenfeld  and  Liitzen  had  been  fought.  From  a  hole  in 
the  roof  of  the  town  hall,  made  on  purpose  by  removing 
pieces  of  slate,  he  watched  the  enemy’s  movements  for 
hours.  Confident  in  their  overwhelming  numbers,  —  some 
43,000  against  20,000,  —  the  combined  army  tried  the  dar¬ 
ing  manoeuvre  of  marching  completely  around  the  Prussian 
flank;  their  one  dread  and  fear  was  that  Frederick  might 
escape.  But,  for  him,  one  of  the  great  chances  of  his  life 
had  come;  under  the  shelter  of  the  Polzenberg  and  Janus- 
berg  he  changed  his  whole  position,  and,  when  thought 
by  the  enemy  to  be  in  full  retreat,  swept  down  upon  them 
from  the  crest  of  the  hills.  Those  were  a  kind  of  tactics 
of  which  the  world  till  then  had  little  dreamed.  In  the 
course  of  an  hour  the  battle  was  decided,  at  a  sacrifice 
in  all  of  530  men.  Frederick  killed  and  wounded  3000 
and  took  5000  prisoners.  The  rest  fled  precipitately,  and 
the  mere  rumor,  “The  Prussians  are  coming,”  was  enough 
to  make  them  march  the  whole  night  through.  The  roads 
were  strewn  with  hats,  cuirasses,  and  heavy  riding  boots ; 
while  the  Thuringian  peasants  earned  handsome  sums  by 
dragging  fugitives  from  the  villages  and  forests  and  deliv¬ 
ering  them  up  at  so  much  a  head.  Voltaire,  in  far-off 
Ferney,  was  in  despair.  “This  is  no  favorable  time  for 
Frenchmen  in  foreign  lands,”  he  wrote;  “they  laugh  in 
our  faces  as  though  we  had  been  adjutants  of  M.  de  Sou¬ 
bise.”  As  for  Frederick,  he  poured  out  his  heart  in  re¬ 
joicing  to  the  Margravine  of  Baireuth:  “Now  I  can 
descend  to  my  tomb  in  peace,  for  the  fame  and  honor  of 


164 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Austria 

nearly 

recovers 

Silesia. 


my  people  are  saved!”  He  wrote  grotesque  odes  to  the 
“ perfumed  heroes”  and  to  the  ecraseurs ,  who  had  them¬ 
selves  been  crushed. 

Yet  one  such  victory  was  not  enough;  still  another 
fierce  encounter  was  needed  to  equalize  the  earlier  losses 
of  this  wonderful  year  of  warfare,  and  to  extricate  the 
caged  lion  from  his  perilous  position.  And  the  bright¬ 
ness  of  Rossbach  was  to  prove  the  merest  foil  to  the 
splendors  of  Leuthen. 

The  scale  in  the  meanwhile  had  leapt  up  in  favor  of  the 
Austrians.  Far  from  being  daunted  by  the  defeat  of  the 
French  and  of  the  troops  of  the  empire,  Maria  Theresa  is 
thought  to  have  heard  of  it  with  a  certain  satisfaction. 
These  allies  had  been  difficult  to  manage  of  late  and  had 
followed  too  much  their  own  purposes  and  inclinations. 
And  Silesia,  in  spite  of  Rossbach,  was  in  a  fair  way  of 
being  won  back.  The  Duke  of  Bevern  was  proving  too 
timid ;  he  hung  on  the  commands  of  Frederick  and  waited 
for  the  royal  approval  of  measures  which  could  only  be 
successful  if  carried  out  at  once.  Thus  Schweidnitz, 
Frederick’s  new  fortress,  fell,  after  a  siege  of  seventeen 
days,  without  a  battle  having  been  offered  to  the  besiegers ; 
and  5800  Prussians  were  made  prisoners  of  war.  When 
finally  an  engagement  did  take  place,  near  Breslau,  the 
circumstances  were  far  less  advantageous;  and  the  de¬ 
feated  Prussians  were  obliged  to  retreat  into  the  town. 
Bevern  himself  was  taken  captive,  —  voluntarily,  as 
Frederick  at  first  believed, — and  when,  soon  afterward, 
Breslau  fell,  the  fate  of  Silesia  seemed  sealed.  Some 
4000  men  who  had  fought  on  the  Prussian  side  went  over 
to  the  empress.  Charles  of  Lorraine  was  instructed  to 
hasten  and  give  the  coup  de  grdce  to  Frederick’s  dis¬ 
organized  army. 

But  the  latter  had  become  a  new  man  since  the  battle  of 


THE  WARS  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


165 


Rossbach.  He  steps  forward  now,  at  the  very  height  of 
his  extraordinary  genius,  full  of  self-confidence,  the  in- 
spirer  of  others,  the  very  God  of  his  troops.  “  His  heart 
is  torn,  but  his  head  is  clear  and  cool,”  declares  his  secre¬ 
tary,  Eichel.  He  found  the  Silesian  army  in  an  incredible 
state  of  demoralization,  but  his  presence  in  camp  worked 
a  marvellous  transformation.  The  sight  of  his  determined 
face, . —  which  had  taken  on  entirely  new  lines  in  the  course 
of  this  awful  war, — the  glance  of  the  great,  earnest  eye,  the 
sound  of  the  sympathetic  voice,  did  as  much  to  restore  order 
as  the  brief,  emphatic  words  with  which  he  addressed  his 
officers.  Whoever  wished  to  abandon  him  might  go  at 
once  without  fear  of  punishment ;  the  situation  was  des¬ 
perate,  a  battle  must  be  risked  at  any  cost.  The  enemy 
favored  him  by  quitting  a  strong  position  in  order  the 
more  quickly  to  dispose  of  this  “  Potsdam  parade  guard  ”  — 
this  tiny  force  from  one-half  to  one-third  the  size  of  their 
own.  “  The  fox  has  crept  out  of  his  hole,”  cried  Frederick, 
in  boundless  glee;  “now  I  will  punish  his  audacity.” 

Here  at  Leuthen  this  royal  commander  tried,  with  phe¬ 
nomenal  success,  his  most  famous  devices;  —  he  played 
with  his  army  as  though  it  had  been  some  instrument, 
some  carefully  graduated  machine.  Making  a  feint  against 
the  enemy’s  right  wing,  he  hurried  the  bulk  of  his  forces 
obliquely  across  their  whole  line  of  battle,  and  fell  with 
terrific  impetus  upon  their  more  exposed  left.  No  clever 
pugilist  ever  more  completely  broke  down  the  guard  of  his 
unwary  antagonist.  The  slaughter  was  appalling;  the 
retreat  so  disastrous  that  only  35,000  starving  and  ill  men 
out  of  an  original  60,000  or  70,000  found  refuge  in  Bohe¬ 
mia;  while,  by  the  capitulation  of  Breslau,  18,000  more 
became  prisoners  of  war.  Napoleon  Bonaparte  said  of 
this  battle :  “  It  was  a  masterpiece  in  the  way  of  evolu¬ 
tions,  manoeuvres,  and  determination,  and  would  alone 


The  battle 
of  Leuthen. 


166 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


English  aid. 


have  sufficed  to  make  Frederick  immortal  and  to  rank  him 
among  the  greatest  generals.  He  attacked  a  vastly  supe¬ 
rior  and  victorious  army,  already  drawn  up  in  line  of 
battle,  with  an  army  consisting  in  part  of  troops  that  had 
just  been  beaten,  and  carried  off  a  great  victory  with 
comparatively  small  losses.” 

With  the  exception  of  the  fortress  of  Schweidnitz,  all 
Silesia  was  once  more  in  Frederick’s  hands.  The  Rus¬ 
sians,  too,  on  the  strength  of  a  report  that  the  Czarina 
Elizabeth  had  died,  —  or  possibly  because  their  leader, 
Apraxin,  was  mixed  up  in  a  conspiracy  to  supplant  her, 
—  had  already  turned  homeward ;  and  Lehwaldt,  thus  set 
free,  had  practically  purged  Pomerania  of  the  Swedes. 
England,  moreover,  had  awakened  to  her  responsibilities, 
had  repudiated  the  Convention  of  Kloster-Zeven,  and 
voted  four  million  pounds  sterling  in  the  way  of  subsidies ; 
besides  placing  the  control  of  the  Hanoverian  forces  under 
a  general  in  whom  Frederick  had  the  fullest  confidence, 
Ferdinand  of  Brunswick,  who  had  served  from  youth  up 
in  the  Prussian  army.  New  indeed  was  the  spirit  which 
William  Pitt  had  infused  into  the  government  of  the  Eng¬ 
lish  nation ;  he  it  was  who  had  cried  out  in  Parliament,  “  I 
feel  the  most  grateful  sentiments  of  veneration  and  zeal 
for  a  prince  who  stands,  the  unshaken  bulwark  of  Europe, 
against  the  most  powerful  and  malignant  confederacy  that 
ever  yet  has  threatened  the  independence  of  mankind.” 

But  Frederick  had  gained  a  breathing  space  only  to  be 
plunged  more  deeply  into  a  sea  of  dangers  and  difficul¬ 
ties.  He  had  hoped  for  peace  after  his  great  victories,  but 
he  soon  realized,  as  he  wrote  to  his  brother  Henry,  that  he 
must  “continue  his  rope-dancing.”  Year  after  year  he 
was  to  experience  more  bitterly  what  it  meant  to  sus¬ 
tain  a  war  against  enemies  on  all  of  his  boundaries ;  year 
after  year  he  was  to  find  it  more  difficult  to  raise  men 


THE  WARS  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


167 


and  money.  Nor  was  it  a  question  of  numbers  alone; 
the  material,  too,  of  his  army  was  rapidly  degenerating. 
The  recruits  were  less  well  trained,  while  no  suitable 
officers  could  be  found  to  take  the  place  of  the  devoted  men 
who  had  fallen  at  their  posts.  It  could  not  be  otherwise, 
when  the  Prussian  state  was  so  infinitely  smaller  in  area 
than  the  domains  of  any  one  of  its  principal  antagonists. 

In  the  spring  of  1758,  Frederick  managed  to  take 
Schweidnitz;  while  Ferdinand  of  Brunswick,  with  great 
energy,  forced  the  French  to  evacuate  Minden,  and  drove 
them  across  the  Rhine.  They  had  suffered  much,  these 
troops  of  Louis  XV. ;  badly  cared  for,  sickness  had  broken 
out  in  their  camp,  and,  in  the  month  of  January  alone,  some 
ten  thousand  had  died  in  hospital.  Later  on  in  the  sum¬ 
mer,  Ferdinand  defeated  Clermont,  who,  to  repeat  a  Paris¬ 
ian  witticism  of  the  time,  “  preached  like  a  soldier  and 
fought  like  an  apostle  ” ;  and  took  Diisseldorf. 

But  the  Czarina  Elizabeth  had  meanwhile  discovered 
and  put  down  the  conspiracy  against  her,  Apraxin  had 
been  removed  from  the  command,  and  Bestucheff  dis¬ 
graced,  threatened  with  the  knout,  and  even  sentenced  to 
death — a  penalty  which  was  then  commuted  to  banish¬ 
ment.  With  more  determination  than  ever  the  campaign 
was  carried  on  in  East  Prussia;  and  General  Fermor, 
Apraxin’s  successor,  brought  the  whole  land  into  his 
hands.  All  the  cities,  as  well  as  the  chief  nobles,  were 
forced  to  swear  allegiance  to  Russia ;  they  did  it  with  an 
apparent  willingness  that  the  Prussian  king  never  forgave. 

Frederick  himself  had  marched  into  Moravia  intending 
to  reduce  the  fortress  of  Olmiitz ;  but  his  engineers  mis¬ 
calculated  the  proper  distance  at  which  to  throw  up  their 
intrenchments,  and,  while  they  were  making  good  their 
fault,  some  four  thousand  valuable  transport  wagons  fell 
into  the  hands  of  the  Austrian  general,  Laudon.  Fred- 


Frederick’s 
retreat  from 
Moravia. 


168 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  battle 
of  Zorn- 
dorf. 


erick,  short  of  ammunition  and  in  every  way  crippled  by 
the  loss,  was  nearly  hemmed  in  between  two  formidable 
armies.  Daun  had  some  seventy  thousand  men,  while  in 
Laudon,  whose  services  he  had  once  rejected  when  offered 
to  himself,  he  found  the  most  formidable  general  with 
whom  he  had  ever  yet  had  to  contend. 

His  own  determination  was  now  quickly  made.  Calling 
his  officers  together,  he  appealed  to  their  loyalty  and 
bravery,  threatened  to  cashier  any  one  of  them  who  should 
say  that  all  was  lost,  or  even  show  a  crestfallen  counte¬ 
nance,  and  then,  abandoning  the  field,  made  one  of  the 
memorable  retreats  of  history,  and  reached  Silesia  with  his 
army  safe  and  sound.  From  here,  after  only  two  days’ 
rest,  he  started  off  with  fourteen  thousand  picked  men  to 
give  battle  to  the  Russians,  who  had  advanced  as  far  as 
the  river  Oder  and  were  threatening  to  overwhelm  the 
whole  Mark  Brandenburg.  “Say  to  all  your  officers,”  he 
wrote  to  Dohna,  to  whom  he  had  intrusted  the  defence  of 
the  Mark,  44 that  my  device  is  ‘conquer  or  die,’  and  that,  if 
any  one  thinks  otherwise,  he  can  stay  on  this  side  of  the 
Oder  and  go  to  the  devil!  ” 

In  ten  days,  through  the  hottest  of  August  weather, 
Frederick  marched  150  miles  to  Frankfort  on  the  Oder; 
then  he  joined  forces  with  Dohna  before  Kiistrin,  obliging 
Fermor  to  abandon  the  siege  of  that  fortress.  Soon  after, 
at  Zorndorf,  was  fought  one  of  the  bloodiest  battles  of  the 
whole  war,  if  not,  indeed,  of  the  whole  century.  Frederick 
had  been  sadly  mistaken  in  these  Russians ;  he  considered 
them  bad  fighters  —  and  he  was  right  as  regarded  their 
capacity  for  executing  swift  manoeuvres.  But  they  stood 
their  ground  in  the  grim  jaws  of  death  as  well  as  any  troops 
in  Europe.  Frederick  conquered  them  here  at  Zorndorf  — 
conquered  them  so  completely  that  they  could  not  make 
their  projected  junction  with  the  Swedes,  and  were  obliged 


THE  WARS  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


169 


soon  to  abandon  the  campaign.  But  the  fierceness  of  the 
ten-hour  fight  had  been  unprecedented ;  maddened  by  the 
cruelty  and  wild  excesses  of  these  half-barbarians,  Fred¬ 
erick,  for  the  first  and  only  time  in  his  life,  had  com¬ 
manded  that  no  mercy  be  shown,  no  quarter  given.  When 
ammunition  grew  scarce,  the  fight  was  continued  with 
bayonets,  sabres,  and  the  but-ends  of  muskets;  dying 
men  clasped  each  other  in  a  last  hostile  embrace,  and  a 
Russian,  mortally  wounded,  was  found  gnawing  the  flesh 
of  a  Prussian.  Frederick’s  losses  were  about  eleven 
thousand,  those  of  Fermor  nearly  twice  that  number. 

Twice  during  this  battle,  the  dashing  cavalry  general, 
Seydlitz,  had  saved  the  wavering  fortunes  of  the  day  by 
unexpected  charges.  At  first  Frederick  had  been  alarmed 
at  his  unwonted  independence  and  had  sent  him  a  com¬ 
mand,  followed  by  a  stern  warning  that  he  must  answer 
for  his  actions  with  his  head.  But  Seydlitz  had  seen  his 
opportunity,  and  sending  word,  “  After  the  battle  my  head 
is  at  my  king’s  service,”  had  gone  his  own  way.  His 
head  was  safe  enough  when,  later,  at  the  door  of  his  tent 
Frederick  received  him  with  a  warm  embrace  and  acknowl¬ 
edged  him  the  real  victor. 

If  any  one  advantage  could  outweigh  the  numerical 
superiority  of  the  allies,  it  was  Frederick’s  capacity  for 
swift  movement  and  sudden  action.  The  dead  that  fell 
at  Zorndorf  could  scarcely  have  found  burial  before  he 
started  off  for  Saxony,  the  defence  of  which  he  had  left  in 
the  hands  of  Prince  Henry  of  Prussia — that  one  of  all  his 
brothers  in  whom,  in  spite  of  the  difference  of  their  char¬ 
acters,  and,  on  Henry’s  part,  of  a  lack  of  sympathy  and 
comprehension,  he  placed  the  most  confidence.  And  here 
in  Saxony,  Henry  had  fully  justified  it.  Daun  had  taken 
advantage  of  Frederick’s  absence  to  invade  the  land,  and 
Henry  had  held  him  at  bay  and  avoided  disaster,  although 


The  defeat 
at  Hoch- 
kirch. 


170 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  battle 
of  Kuners- 
dorf. 


the  different  forces  against  him  outnumbered  his  own  by 
four  to  one. 

For  the  present,  indeed,  the  days  of  signal  victories 
were  over;  and,  for  the  three  defeats  which  followed,  Fred¬ 
erick  had  no  one  but  himself  to  thank.  At  Hochkirch, 
near  Bautzen,  he  had  encamped  in  a  position  which  he 
knew  to  be  dangerous,  seeing  that  a  vastly  superior  force  of 
Austrians  held  the  hills  all  around.  Marshal  Keith  had 
said  to  him,  “  If  the  Austrians  leave  us  unmolested  in  this 
camp,  they  deserve  to  be  hanged;”  but  Frederick  had 
merely  answered,  “It  is  to  be  hoped  that  they  fear  us 
more  than  the  gallows.”  He  despised  this  Daun,  this 
Fabius  Cunctator,  who  always  remained  on  the  defensive. 
But  in  the  present  case  Daun  listened  to  good  advice  and 
made  a  night  attack  upon  the  Prussians.  The  latter 
rushed  to  arms  half-naked  and  confused  by  the  din  and 
uproar;  so  dark  it  was  that  they  could  only  distinguish 
friend  from  foe  by  feeling  for  the  fur  caps  of  their  antago¬ 
nists.  For  five  hours  they  made  a  stubborn  resistance,  and 
then  retreated,  beaten,  and  with  losses  much  greater  than 
those  of  the  Austrians,  but  in  good  order.  Frederick, 
who  fortunately  had  not  yet  received  the  news  of  the  death 
of  his  favorite  sister,  Wilhelmine,  which  took  place  in 
this  very  night  of  Hochkirch,  remained  calm  and  cheerful. 
He  did  indeed  Avrite  to  his  brother  Henry,  “  Unhappily  I 
am  still  alive ;  ”  but  on  the  very  same  day  he  also  wrote  to 
Schmettau,  the  commandant  of  Dresden,  “I  am  deter¬ 
mined  not  to  retreat  a  single  step,  but  rather,  standing 
firm,  to  await  the  enemy  and  give  him  battle  a  second 
time.” 

But  Daun  furnished  him  with  no  opportunity;  intrench¬ 
ing  himself  with  as  much  care  as  though  he  had  never 
Avon  a  victory,  the  Austrian  commander  considered  that 
he  was  doing  enough  for  his  mistress  by  guarding  the  road 


THE  WARS  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


171 


to  Silesia,  where  a  second  Austrian  army  was  besieging 
Neisse.  Frederick  slipped  by  him,  relieved  Neisse,  and 
was  soon  back  in  Saxony. 

In  the  following  summer  the  Russians  again  advanced 
to  the  Oder.  Elizabeth’s  zeal  had  slackened  after  Zorn- 
dorf,  but  the  courts  of  Vienna  and  Paris  had  taken  care 
that  she  should  see  an  official  report  in  a  Berlin  newspaper 
in  which  the  Russians  were  spoken  of  as  “barbarians.” 
She  had  fallen  into  a  violent  rage,  and  informed  Maria 
Theresa,  through  Esterhazy,  that  she  would  risk  her  last 
rouble  and  her  last  man  for  the  sake  of  annihilating  the 
king  of  Prussia.  Her  own  guard  regiments  had  been 
despatched  from  St.  Petersburg,  and,  in  July,  1759,  the 
reenforced  army  won  the  battle  of  Kay,  near  Ziillichau, 
and  took  the  important  town  of  Frankfort-on-the-Oder. 
For  the  first  time  in  the  war,  a  supplementary  corps  of 
Austrians,  under  none  other  than  Laudon,  was  sent  to 
Prussia,  and  Frederick’s  downfall  seemed  assured. 

Nothing  daunted,  he  attacked  the  combined  army,  nearly 
double  the  size  of  his  own,  on  the  heights  of  Kunersdorf, 
routed  the  Russian  left  wing,  and  took  seventy  guns  and 
several  thousand  prisoners.  Had  he  been  willing  to  rest 
on  his  laurels  and  to  give  a  breathing  space  to  his  army, 
which  had  been  marching  and  fighting  for  twelve  hours, 
he  would  have  saved  himself  the  most  awful,  the  most 
overwhelming,  of  all  his  defeats.  But  he  wished  to  anni¬ 
hilate  the  Russians  by  cutting  off  their  retreat ;  and,  failing 
in  this,  drove  them  to  make  a  last  desperate  stand.  They 
held  the  Spitzberg  against  all  his  assaults ;  although  the 
Prussian  infantry  stood  there,  hour  after  hour,  suffocated 
by  the  heat  and  tortured  by  the  thirst — which  they  had 
been  unable  to  quench  on  their  long,  dusty  march.  They 
hoped  to  the  last  that  Seydlitz  would  sweep  down  to  their 
rescue  as  he  had  done  at  Zorndorf;  but  Seydlitz  was 


172 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Frederick’s 

despair. 


The  battle 
of  Minden. 


lying  wounded  and  could  bring  them  no  help.  A  right  in¬ 
stinct  had  led  him  to  delay  carrying  out  one  of  Frederick’s 
commands,  but  when  the  order  came  a  secotid  time  he 
had  fallen  in  attempting  to  obey. 

The  king  himself  had  shown  a  never-failing  courage, 
and  at  the  last  could  scarcely  be  drawn  from  the  lost  field. 
Two  horses  had  been  shot  under  him;  his  clothes  were 
riddled  with  bullets,  one  of  which  would  certainly  have 
wounded  him  had  it  not  flattened  against  a  golden  etui. 
The  outcome  of  the  battle  procured  him  the  darkest 
moments  of  despair  that  he  had  ever  known  in  his 
whole  life.  “Of  an  army  of  48,000,  there  are  not  at 
this  moment  3,000  left,”  he  wrote  to  Finkenstein.  “The 
consequences  of  the  battle  will  be  worse  than  the  battle 
itself;  I  have  no  more  resources,  and,  not  to  hide  the 
truth,  I  consider  that  all  is  lost.  I  shall  not  survive 
the  ruin  of  my  country.  Farewell  forever!”  So  com¬ 
pletely  did  he  consider  his  career  ended  that,  under  pre¬ 
tence  of  illness,  he  resigned  the  command  to  General 
Finck,  bidding  him  make  a  last  effort  to  save  Berlin 
should  Laudon  march  in  that  direction.  But,  a  few  days 
later,  he  was  able  to  write  to  his  brother  Henry:  “  You  may 
reckon  upon  it  that  so  long  as  my  eyes  can  open  I  shall 
do  my  duty  and  serve  my  state.”  And  again,  after  the 
lapse  of  a  fortnight,  overjoyed  at  hearing  that  the  Russians 
had  retired  from  the  Mark:  “I  have  to  announce  to  you 
a  miracle  that  has  happened  in  favor  of  the  House  of 
Brandenburg!  ” 

Frederick  found  that  his  losses  were  not  so  great  as  he 
had  feared  —  some  18,000  or  19,000  against  16,000  of  the 
enemy;  and  in  this  same  month  Ferdinand  of  Brunswick 
had  won  the  great  battle  of  Minden  against  the  new  French 
commander,  Contades.  Here  at  Minden,  the  enemy  would 
have  been  as  completely  routed  as  was  Frederick’s  army  at 


THE  WARS  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


173 


Kunersdorf,  had  it  not  been  for  the  cowardice  and  folly  of 
the  English  Lord  Sackville,  who,  at  a  decisive  moment, 
refused  to  join  in  the  engagement.  “For  God’s  sake,”  a 
lieutenant  colonel  had  said  to  Ligonier,  Ferdinand’s  aide- 
de-camp,  “repeat  your  orders  that  that  man  may  not  pre¬ 
tend  he  does  not  understand  them ;  for  it  is  now  over  half 
an  hour  since  we  received  orders  to  march,  and  yet  we  are 
still  here.  For  you  see,  sir,  the  condition  he  is  in.” 
Sackville  was  later  court-martialled,  and  declared  “  unfit 
to  serve  his  Majesty  in  any  military  capacity  whatever.” 

There  is  no  doubt  but  that,  had  Daun  and  the  Russian  The  sur- 
general,  Soltykoff,  acted  in  concert,  Frederick’s  worst  fears  render  at 

•  Maxen 

would  have  been  realized.  But  the  Russians  were  angry 
because,  save  for  sending  Laudon’s  corps,  the  Austrians 
had  done  little  to  support  them.  They  themselves  had 
lost  27,000  men  since  reaching  the  Oder;  it  was  time, 

Soltykoff  thought,  that  Daun  should  bear  more  of  the  bur¬ 
den  of  the  war  and  allow  his,  Soltykoff’s,  army  to  rest. 
Moreover,  the  Austrian  field  marshal,  instead  of  furnishing 
long-promised  provisions  and  supplies,  now  offered  a 
mere  money  payment.  “My  soldiers  do  not  eat  money,” 
answered  Soltykoff,  in  a  rage;  and  the  friction  at  last 
precluded  all  common  action. 

For  Frederick,  indeed,  fate  still  had  blows  enough  in 
reserve.  Immediately  after  Kunersdorf,  he  had  ordered 
Schmettau  to  make  what  terms  he  could  for  Dresden. 

The  commandant  surrendered  within  a  fortnight,  con¬ 
vinced  that  without  hope  of  succor  a  garrison  of  4000 
could  accomplish  nothing  against  six  times  that  number. 

The  first  fruits  of  the  war,  the  Prussian  centre  of  supplies, 
was  lost;  and  soon  came  the  surrender  at  Maxen  of 
12,000  men  under  General  Finck,  who,  in  too  literal 
obedience  to  commands,  had  allowed  himself  to  be  sur¬ 
rounded,  and  then,  instead  of  fighting  his  way  out,  had 


174 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Frederick’s 

dwindling 

resources. 


laid  down  his  arms.  “That  cuts  me  to  the  marrow,” 
Frederick  said  when  he  heard  of  the  disaster;  and,  a  whole 
year  later,  he  declared:  “If  we  are  conquered,  we  shall 
have  to  date  our  ruin  from  the  day  of  that  wretched  occur¬ 
rence  at  Maxen.”  Finck  was  disgraced  and  placed  under 
arrest. 

It  seemed,  indeed,  in  the  two  years  that  followed,  as  if 
even  Frederick’s  superhuman  efforts  must  meet  with  fail¬ 
ure.  With  breathless  interest  all  Europe  watched  him 
extricate  himself  from  one  hopeless  situation  after  another. 
What  saved  him  was  his  own  activity  and  courage;  the 
capability  and  bravery  of  generals  like  Ziethen,  Seydlitz, 
Ferdinand  of  Brunswick,  and  Prince  Henry  of  Prussia; 
and,  lastly,  the  fact  that  at  home  the  affairs  of  the  allies 
were  managed,  in  the  final  instance,  by  three  capricious 
women.  How  long  had  Maria  Theresa  clung  to  Charles 
of  Lorraine  after  all  the  world  knew  that  he  was  nothing 
of  a  general !  It  was  the  same  with  Elizabeth  and  Fermor. 

All  the  same,  the  iron  ring  was  being  drawn  closer  and 
closer  around  Frederick.  In  the  spring  of  1760  he  could 
oppose  but  90,000  Prussians  to  200,000  Austrians;  for 
the  first  time  since  the  war  began,  Laudon  could  open  a 
campaign  on  Prussian  territory.  He  took  Glatz  and  ap¬ 
peared  before  Breslau,  after  having  fairly  annihilated  a 
corps  under  General  de  la  Motte  Fouque  at  Landshut. 
Fouqu6  himself,  the  Prussian  Bayard,  was  wounded  and 
taken  prisoner,  but  not  until  the  bravery  of  his  resistance 
had  filled  even  the  enemy  with  admiration.  One  of  the 
Austrian  colonels,  Voit,  would  have  lent  him  his  own 
horse :  “  I  should  only  soil  your  fine  trappings  with  my 
blood,”  he  said,  refusing  the  offer.  “ My  trappings  will 
be  worth  infinitely  more,”  was  the  generous  response,  “if 
they  are  spattered  with  the  blood  of  a  hero.” 

Frederick  himself,  after  bombarding  Dresden  to  no 


THE  WARS  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


175 


effect,  marched  to  Silesia,  where  he  found  himself  sur-  The  battle 
rounded  by  no  less  than  three  Austrian  armies :  those  of  of  Liegnitz. 
Lacy,  Daun,  and  Laudon ;  while  a  large  Russian  corps 
was  not  far  off.  These,  according  to  his  own  verdict, 
were  the  most  perilous  days  through  which  he  had  ever 
passed ;  only  the  most  extreme  wariness  and  agility  saved 
him  from  destruction.  Night  after  night,  he  changed  his 
camp  after  the  enemy  had  already  made  their  dispositions 
for  an  attack.  At  Liegnitz,  at  last,  they  felt  sure  of 
securing  him;  Daun  and  Lacy  were  to  fall  upon  him 
simultaneously,  while  Laudon  was  to  cut  off  his  retreat. 

He  was  told  of  the  Austrian  boast,  “  The  sack  is  open, 
we  need  only  to  pull  the  string  and  the  king  and  his  army 
are  caught!  ”  “  They  are  not  so  wrong,”  was  his  comment, 

“but  I  hope  to  slit  their  sack!  ”  Under  cover  of  the  night 
he  caught  Laudon  on  the  march  before  the  latter  could  take 
up  his  appointed  position.  Daun,  with  his  usual  inde¬ 
cision,  did  not  come  to  the  rescue  until  the  last  moment ; 
and  Ziethen  received  his  advance  guard  with  a  volley  from 
the  heaviest  guns.  Lacy  was  held  back  by  swampy  ground, 
though  Laudon  believed  that  he  had  purposely  left  him 
in  the  lurch.  The  latter’s  losses  were  nearly  11,000  as 
compared  to  3500  of  the  enemy. 

As  for  Frederick,  he  evaded  the  Russian  general,  Czer- 
nitscheff,  and  threw  him  into  a  panic  by  the  simple  sub¬ 
terfuge  of  allowing  one  of  his  own  letters,  with  a  greatly 
exaggerated  account  of  the  victory  of  Liegnitz,  to  fall,  as 
if  by  chance,  into  Russian  hands.  But  Czernitscheff, 
later  joining  with  Totleben,  appeared  before  Berlin,  and 
forced  it  to  capitulate  and  to  pay  a  heavy  ransom.  Lacy 
occupied  Potsdam  and  Charlottenburg,  in  which  latter 
place  much  wanton  damage  was  done.  On  the  news  of 
Frederick’s  approach,  the  Russians  withdrew  to  the  Oder, 
and  Lacy  to  Torgau,  where  he  joined  Daun.  The  circle 


176 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  battle 
of  Torgau. 


had  narrowed  until  it  enclosed  the  very  heart  of  Frederick’s 
own  domains. 

Here  at  Torgau,  Frederick,  with  44,000  men,  stood  over 
against  the  60,000  of  Daun,  determined,  as  he  wrote  to 
his  brother  Henry,  “to  conquer  or  die.”  He  had  called 
his  generals  together  and  told  them  that  he  “did  not 
wish  the  opinion  of  any  one  of  them,  but  would  merely  tell 
them  that  Daun  must  be  attacked  on  the  following  day.” 
Ziethen  was  intrusted  with  the  whole  right  wing,  and 
was  ordered  to  outflank  the  enemy  and  cut  off  their  retreat 
to  the  south.  The  strength  of  the  Austrians  lay  in  the 
number  of  their  heavy  guns,  which  almost  doubled  those 
of  the  Prussians ;  and  Frederick’s  first  attack  was  greeted 
by  the  most  murderous  fire  he  had  ever  experienced. 
Indeed,  the  Prussians  soon  found  that  they  had  before 
them  a  task  of  unwonted  seriousness.  In  the  midst  of 
the  engagement  Frederick  himself,  who  had  hitherto 
borne  such  a  charmed  existence,  was  struck  in  the  breast 
by  a  bullet  and  fell  unconscious  from  his  horse;  for¬ 
tunately,  the  ball  was  almost  a  spent  one,  and  during  a 
part  at  least  of  the  remainder  of  the  battle,  he  was  able 
to  retain  the  command.  Wearied,  indeed,  and  weakened, 
he  at  last  repaired  to  a  little  church  near  by  to  have  his 
wound  bound  and  to  formulate  his  plans.  Darkness  had 
come  on  and  no  one  knew  which  side  had  won.  Austrian 
and  Prussian  soldiers  sat  down  peaceably  together,  after 
mutually  agreeing  to  surrender  themselves  the  next  day  to 
the  army  which  should  prove  to  have  been  victorious.  The 
Austrian  commanders,  indeed,  considered  the  field  theirs, 
and  sent  off  the  news  to  Vienna;  where  it  was  proclaimed 
in  the  streets  and  imparted  by  special  envoys  to  the  foreign 
powers.  But  they  had  counted  without  Ziethen ’s  hussars. 
From  the  opposite  side,  after  night  had  already  fallen,  he 
had  started  to  storm  the  heights  of  Supitz,  which  the 


THE  WARS  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


ITT 


Austrians  had  maintained  the  whole  day ;  and  by  midnight 
had  forced  Daun  to  order  a  retreat. 

Except  for  the  fact  that  defeat  would  have  meant  ruin, 
Frederick  gained  little  by  dearly  bought  victories  like 
Torgau.  Ten  thousand  more  of  his  sadly  dwindling  army 
were  incapacitated  for  fighting.  He  himself  was  growing 
very  bitter  and  savage  against  those  who  forced  him  to 
continue  the  war,  and  who  had  just  plundered  his  capital. 
He  sanctioned  now  so  merciless  a  sacking  of  the  castles  of 
Torgau  and  Hubertsburg,  that  one  of  his  generals,  Saldern, 
refused  to  carry  out  his  commands. 

In  the  following  spring,  Frederick  was  able  to  oppose 
only  96,000  men  to  three  times  that  number  of  Aus¬ 
trians  and  Russians;  while  Ferdinand  of  Brunswick  had 
to  contend  as  usual  with  a  French  army  nearly  double 
the  size  of  his  own.  The  war  enters  now  into  a  some¬ 
what  slower  tempo ;  the  year  1T61  is  the  year  of  sieges 
and  camps,  and,  on  the  Silesian  scene  of  war  at  least,  is 
not  marked  by  a  single  pitched  battle.  For  the  first  time 
in  the  course  of  the  war,  Frederick  devoted  his  whole  ener¬ 
gies  to  intrenching  himself  as  strongly  as  possible;  and 
his  camp  at  Bunzelwitz,  north  of  Schweidnitz,  proved 
marvellously  strong  and  effective.  The  Austrians,  on  the 
other  hand,  besieged  and  took  Schweidnitz,  while,  at  the 
same  time,  Colberg,  after  a  long  and  glorious  resistance, 
fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Russians. 

Thus  again  the  field  of  action  was  narrowed;  thus  again 
Herculean  efforts  were  needed  to  raise  the  Prussian  army, 
which  had  shrunk  to  a  meagre  60,000,  to  its  normal 
size.  Any  other  man  than  Frederick,  indeed,  would 
have  been  completely  brought  to  bay  by  the  sickening 
news  that  now  came  from  England:  how  the  courageous 
and  warlike  Pitt  had  fallen  and  been  replaced  by  the 
favorite  of  the  new  king,  the  pacific  Bute;  how  the  mili- 

VOL.  II  —  N 


Frederick 
on  the  de¬ 
fensive. 


Lord  Bute’s 
abandon¬ 
ment  of 
Frederick. 


1T8 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


tary  convention  with  Prussia  had  not  been  renewed,  and 
the  English  subsidies,  which  of  late  years  had  been  very 
considerable  indeed,  were  henceforward  to  cease;  how 
Frederick  was  advised  to  make  peace,  even  at  the  price  of 
some  of  his  lands.  So  far  did  Bute  go  in  his  desire  for 
peace  and  quiet,  that  he  was  willing  to  renounce  New¬ 
foundland  and  other  English  conquests  in  North  America; 
and  drew  down  upon  himself,  in  consequence,  in  his  own 
land,  a  flood  of  satiric  sheets,  in  which  he  was  most  un¬ 
favorably  compared  to  the  idolized  Pitt.  Nay  more,  Bute 
so  far  forgot  the  long  Prussian  friendship  as  to  send  an 
envoy  to  urge  the  Russian  court  to  continue  its  armies  in 
the  field  against  Frederick,  on  the  ground  that  otherwise 
Frederick  would  have  free  play  against  Maria  Theresa,  and 
thus  the  war  might  be  prolonged  indefinitely!  The  Eng¬ 
lish  treason  to  the  German  cause  at  Utrecht  was  nothing  to 
this  base  attempt  at  crippling  a  former  ally.  Bute’s  own 
envoy,  Mitchell,  was  outraged  at  such  conduct  and  at  his 
chief’s  whole  attitude.  He  begged  Frederick  not  to  con¬ 
found  the  English  nation  with  a  madman,  who  was  rush¬ 
ing  to  his  own  destruction  and  would  surely  end  upon  the 
scaffold.  “I  am  tired  of  my  accursed  trade,”  Mitchell 
wrote  to  Keith,  the  envoy  at  St.  Petersburg. 

To  Bute’s  surprise,  Frederick  accepted  the  withdrawal 
of  the  subsidies  with  a  certain  equanimity;  the  demand 
that  he  should  rush  head  over  heels  (a  V  Jiurlu-burlu)  into 
a  peace  he  declared  impossible  of  fulfilment.  “  The  Eng¬ 
lish  thought,”  he  wrote  later,  “that  money  did  everything 
and  that  there  was  no  money  except  in  England.”  But 
he  never  forgave  this  desertion ;  one  of  his  favorite  horses, 
which  he  had  named  after  Bute,  was  condemned  to  haul 
wood  with  base  mules.  When  England’s  war  with  her 
American  colonies  broke  out,  all  Frederick’s  sympathies 
were  with  the  latter;  and  on  the  Hessian  soldiers  who  were 


THE  WARS  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


179 


sold  to  fight  across  the  water  he  placed  the  same  tax,  when 
they  crossed  his  domains,  as  on  cattle  going  to  slaughter. 

Frederick  was  kept  from  despair  and,  so  far  as  human 
judgment  reaches,  from  utter  ruin,  by  events  which  were 
occurring  simultaneously  in  Russia.  His  old,  indefatiga¬ 
ble  enemy,  Elizabeth,  died  on  January  5,  1762;  and  was 
succeeded  by  her  Holstein  nephew,  Peter  III.,  who  had 
always  cherished  a  romantic  attachment  for  Frederick. 
In  the  very  night  after  the  Czarina’s  decease,  couriers  were 
sent  off  to  the  army,  bidding  it  advance  no  farther  into 
Prussian  territory  and  to  refrain  from  all  hostilities ; 
within  a  week,  a  secret  messenger  had  been  despatched  to 
Frederick  himself,  assuring  him  of  the  new  Czar’s  firm 
friendship.  The  Prussian  king  answered  by  freeing 
Peter’s  little  German  principality  of  Zerbst  from  all  levies 
and  imposts,  and  by  returning  all  the  Russian  prisoners 
of  war.  In  the  month  of  May,  a  formal  peace  was  signed 
at  St.  Petersburg;  and  the  event  was  celebrated  with  the 
utmost  rejoicing  in  every  city  of  the  Mark.  “  Heaven 
still  stands  by  us,”  wrote  Frederick  to  Ferdinand  of 
Brunswick,  “and  everything  will  turn  out  well.”  He 
had  grown  as  tired  of  this  struggle,  as  tired  of  life,  to 
use  his  own  favorite  simile,  as  the  Wandering  Jew  him¬ 
self;  but  now  the  end  was  in  sight.  The  peace  with 
Russia  was  followed  by  one  with  Sweden,  with  which 
power,  indeed,  Frederick  said  contemptuously  that  he 
was  scarcely  aware  of  having  been  at  war :  one  of  his  gen¬ 
erals,  Belling,  had  had  a  little  trouble  with  these  Swedes, 
but  would  probabty  settle  it  by  himself. 

Peter  III.’s  enthusiastic  demonstrations  of  friendship 
went  so  far,  that  he  had  himself  chosen  colonel  of  a  Prussian 
regiment,  and  that  he  also  sent  Czernitscheff  back  with  eigh¬ 
teen  thousand  men  to  fight  on  the  side  of  this  former  enemy. 
The  Russian  general  joined  Frederick  when  the  latter  was 


Russia 

changes 

front. 


The  battle 
of  Burkers- 
dorf. 


180 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  peace 
of  Huberts- 
burg. 


preparing  to  figlit  a  battle  for  the  rescue  of  Schweidnitz ; 
but  the  brave  Prussian  king  was  none  the  less  destined  to 
finish  this  war  without  the  aid  of  foreign  troops.  Just  as 
the  attack  was  about  to  commence  against  the  Austrians, 
who  were  posted  on  the  heights  of  Burkersdorf,  news  came 
that  Peter  III.  had  been  deposed  by  Catherine  II.,  who, 
though  willing  to  ratify  the  recent  peace,  was  not  minded 
to  shed  the  blood  of  her  Russians  in  an  indifferent  cause. 
So  much  was  gained  by  Frederick,  that  Czernitscheff  agreed 
to  keep  secret  from  the  Austrians  the  order  for  his  recall ; 
his  soldiers,  though  lay  figures  in  the  battle  of  Burkers¬ 
dorf,  helped  greatly  to  decide  the  day  in  favor  of  the 
Prussians. 

The  long  struggle  of  years  was  ending  where  it  had 
begun,  as  a  stern  duel  between  Austria  and  Prussia. 
George  III.  of  England,  in  November,  1762,  closed  the 
treaty  of  Fontainebleau  with  France  on  the  understanding 
that  each  power  should  abandon  its  former  ally. 

But  how  could  even  a  Maria  Theresa  hope  to  compete, 
alone,  with  an  enemy  whom  she  had  failed  to  crush  when 
in  bond  with  nearly  the  whole  continent  of  Europe  ?  She 
offered  to  accept  the  mediation  of  the  electoral  prince  of 
Saxony;  and,  when  Frederick  refused,  sent  her  own  envoy 
direct  to  the  castle  of  Hubertsburg  with  directions  to 
agree  to  a  peace  on  the  basis  of  a  return  to  the  condition 
of  things  before  the  war  —  a  solution  of  the  difficulties 
which  Frederick  himself  had  proposed.  Yet,  even  then, 
the  negotiations,  which  were  conducted  on  the  Prussian 
side  by  the  minister,  Hertzberg,  occupied  a  full  seven 
weeks,  many  of  the  questions  raised  being  merely  inci¬ 
dental.  The  Viennese  envoy  insisted,  for  instance,  that 
in  both  copies  of  the  treaty  the  name  of  Maria  Theresa 
should  come  first;  and  negotiations  had  to  cease  until 
word  came  from  Frederick  that  the  matter  was  wholly 


THE  WARS  OF  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT 


181 


indifferent  to  him.  The  peace  was  signed  on  the  15th  of 
February,  1768,  a  status  quo  in  every  particular. 

This,  then,  was  the  end  of  the  great  struggle  that  had 
cost  a  million  lives  and  loaded  every  state  of  Europe,  save 
Prussia,  with  such  a  national  debt  as  they  have  never  yet 
been  able  to  liquidate.  Unlike  the  majority  of  peace 
treaties,  it  seemed  to  satisfy  every  one ;  although  the  un¬ 
doubted  victor  was  Frederick,  who  retained  Silesia,  after 
having  warded  off  from  the  Prussian  state  an  almost  cer¬ 
tain  destruction.  The  English  envoy,  Mitchell,  immedi¬ 
ately  on  the  receipt  of  the  news,  wrote  to  the  Prussian 
king  that  he  had  long  considered  him  the  first  of  warriors, 
but  must  now  admire  him  as  the  most  able  negotiator  that 
had  ever  lived. 


CHAPTER  V 


FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  IN  TIME  OF  PEACE 

Literature  :  Koser  has  excellent  chapters  on  various  phases  of  Fred¬ 
erick’s  reign.  See  also  the  learned  biography  by  Preuss.  Reimann, 
Neuere  Geschichte  des  preussischen  Staates ,  deals  exhaustively  with  the 
period  from  1763  on.  Dohrn’s  Denkwurdigkeiten  are  an  interesting 
treatment  of  the  last  twenty-five  years  of  the  eighteenth  century,  by  a 
contemporary.  Tuttle  is  at  his  best  when  treating  of  Frederick  in  time 
of  peace.  Oncken’s  Friedrich  der  Grasse  is  not  remarkable  for  any 
merits.  See  also  Pierson  and  Eberty.  Some  of  Schmoller’s  excellent 
studies  include  Frederick’s  time. 


Frederick  a 

national 

hero. 


If  the  happenings  in  Prussia  occupy  considerable  space 
in  our  pages,  it  is  not  merely  because  these  matters  are 
intrinsically  of  great  interest,  but  also  because  that  state 
was  now  actually  assuming  the  leadership  in  Germany. 
When  once  an  elector  of  the  empire,  in  a  seven  years’ 
struggle,  had  succeeded  in  defeating,  not  merely  the  house 
of  Austria,  with  four  times  the  territory  and  six  times  the 
population,  but,  at  the  same  time,  the  might  of  Russia  and 
France  combined,  — not  to  speak  of  the  whole  of  the  rest 
of  Germany,  —  there  was  no  doubt  as  to  where  lay  the 
centre  of  national  gravity.  Frederick  the  Great  is  looked 
upon  to-day,  not  as  the  special  hero  of  the  Prussians,  but 
as  the  hero  of  the  whole  German  people.  His  portrait  was 
hung  in  the  huts  of  peasants  all  over  the  land,  and  was  sold 
in  so  many  impressions  that  at  this  day  contemporary 
copies  can  be  obtained  in  the  print  shops  for  a  mere  song. 

In  person,  Frederick  was  a  typical  German,  fair-haired 
and  with  blue  eyes  of  wonderful  brilliancy  —  we  are  told 
by  one  who  saw  him  often,  that  none  of  the  portraits  could 

do  justice  to  those  eyes.  In  stature  he  was  very  short, 

182 


FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  IN  TIME  OF  PEACE  183 


measuring  not  more  than  five  feet  five.  In  his  personal 
appearance,  as  well  as  in  all  his  habits  and  ways  of 
thought,  he  changed  greatly  in  the  course  of  the  Seven 
Years’  War;  one  has  only  to  look  at  the  engraving  by 
Wille,  taken  in  the  year  of  his  accession,  and  to  compare 
it  with  one  of  the  later  ones,  like  that  of  Bartolozzi,  to 
appreciate  the  difference.  In  the  one  the  features  are 
well  rounded,  handsome,  radiant,  and  rather  pleasantly 
arrogant;  in  the  other  they  are  grim,  determined,  foxy, 
and  deeply  lined  with  care.  He  writes  himself  in  one  of 
his  letters  about  those  wrinkles  and  their  cause,  and  we 
can  trace  the  change  in  other  ways.  No  more  striking 
contrast  can  be  imagined  than  that  which  appears  in  the 
whole  tone  of  his  correspondence.  “My  youth,  the  fire 
of  passion,  the  longing  for  fame,”  he  writes  to  Jordan,  in 
1740,  “yes,  to  be  frank,  curiosity  and,  in  the  last  instance, 
a  secret  instinct,  have  driven  me  from  my  quiet  rest;  and 
the  wish  to  see  my  name  in  the  news-leaves  and  in  history 
has  led  me  astray.  Come  to  me  here,  philosophy  main¬ 
tains  its  rights,  and  I  assure  you  I  would  think  only  of 
peace  and  quiet  had  I  not  this  accursed  desire  for  fame.” 
“Yes,  experience  is  a  fine  thing,”  he  wrote  in  1762;  “in 
my  youth  I  was  buoyant  as  a  foal  that  springs  around  a 
meadow  without  a  bridle,  now  I  have  grown  as  cautious 
as  old  Nestor.  But  more  than  that,  I  am  gray,  furrowed 
with  grief,  bowed  with  bodily  ills  —  only  fit,  in  short,  to 
be  thrown  to  the  dogs.” 

The  price  of  this  king’s  victories  had  indeed  been  a  ter¬ 
rible  one  to  pay.  No  language  can  do  justice  to  the  stead¬ 
fastness  with  which  he  had  met  every  kind  of  onslaught; 
but  the  man  within  was  filled  with  thoughts  of  bitterness 
and  despair.  “Death  is  sweet  in  comparison  to  such  a 
life,”  he  wrote  in  1760.  “.  .  .  Never  will  I  outlive  the 

moment  that  obliges  me  to  sign  a  disadvantageous  peace. 


Personal 
character¬ 
istics  of 
Frederick. 


Terrible 
strain  of 
the  Seven 
Years’ 
War. 


184 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Frederick’s 
coldness  to 
his  wife. 


...  1  have  lost  all  my  friends  and  my  dearest  relations ; 

my  unhappiness  has  reached  the  limits  of  possibility;  I 
have  nothing  left  for  which  to  hope.” 

As  early  as  1758,  he  had  written  that  he  had  lost  every¬ 
thing  he  loved  and  honored  in  the  world.  It  would  be 
hard  to  equal  in  bitterness  and  cynicism  the  terms  in 
which  he  speaks  of  his  prospects  in  1761 :  “Next  year,  too, 
I  shall  have  to  go  on  rope-dancing  and  making  dangerous 
bounds  whenever  it  pleases  their  very  apostolic,  very 
Christian,  and  very  Muscovitic  majesties  to  call,  ‘Jump, 
Marquis !  ’  .  .  .  Ah,  how  hard-hearted  men  are !  They 
say  to  me,  ‘You  have  friends.’  Yes,  fine  friends,  who 
cross  their  arms  and  tell  me,  ‘We  really  wish  you  all  suc¬ 
cess!  ’  — ‘But  I  am  drowning;  throw  me  a  rope!  ’  — ‘Oh, 
no,  you  will  not  drown.’ — ‘Yes,  1  must  sink  the  next 
moment.’  — ‘Oh,  we  hope  the  contrary.  But  if  it  should 
happen,  be  convinced  that  we  shall  place  a  fine  inscription 
on  your  tomb!  ’  ”  Shortly  before  the  end  of  the  war  he 
wrote  to  Frau  von  Camas,  “You  speak  of  the  death  of 
poor  F.  .  .  .  Ah,  dear  Mamma,  for  six  years  now  it  is 
no  longer  the  dead,  but  the  living  I  bemoan.” 

Beyond  a  doubt,  the  halcyon  days  of  Frederick’s  life 
fell  in  the  period  between  the  Peace  of  Breslau,  in  1745, 
and  the  beginning  of  the  Seven  Years’  War,  in  1756.  It 
is  true  that  his  marriage  had  turned  out  fully  as  unhappily 
as  he  had  prophesied.  He  had  declared,  at  the  time,  that 
he  would  put  away  his  Brunswick  bride  on  the  day  of  his 
coronation  ;  but  there  was  no  formal  proceeding  of  the  kind. 
There  had  been  a  period,  indeed,  when,  at  Rheinsberg,  they 
had  lived  together  quite  happily.  When  he  first  went  off 
to  the  Silesian  wars  he  wrote  to  her,  if  not  warmly,  at  least 
in  a  friendly  strain;  he  counts  on  the  pleasure,  he  de¬ 
clares,  of  seeing  her  again  after  the  peace.  But  he  gradu¬ 
ally  grows  colder  and  colder;  and  when  her  brother  dies 


FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  IN  TIME  OF  PEACE  185 


he  waits  a  long  time  before  sending  her  a  word  of  regret. 
Their  relations  were  at  last  established  on  the  most  distant 
and  formal  of  footings.  Frederick  always  insisted,  indeed, 
that  she  should  receive  to  the  full  the  honors  due  to  a 
queen ;  and  her  court,  at  Berlin  in  the  winter  and  at  Schon- 
hausen  in  the  summer,  was  the  centre  of  considerable 
activity.  Ambassadors  were  punctilious  in  paying  their 
respects ;  her  birthday  was  a  brilliant  festival ;  while 
parades  and  other  expressions  of  rejoicing  were  inaugu¬ 
rated  in  her  honor.  The  king  made  her  formal  visits  at 
long  intervals ;  but  to  Potsdam,  where  he  resided  for  half 
the  year,  she  might  never  come  —  not  even  when  her  hus¬ 
band  was  desperately  ill.  It  is  doubtful  if  she  ever  even 
laid  eyes  on  Frederick’s  exquisite  little  palace  of  Sans 
Souci.  Once  when  her  brother  Ferdinand  came  to  Berlin 
and  Frederick  was  absent  in  the  wars,  the  latter  wrote  to 
Ferdinand  that  he  would  be  pleased  to  have  him  visit  the 
palace,  and,  if  the  queen  should  choose  to  accompany  him, 
everything  would  be  ready  for  her  reception.  >  But  Eliza¬ 
beth  Christine  proudly  refused.  She  would  not  choose  the 
time  of  her  husband’s  absence  to  visit  his  abode. 

Frederick  was  right  when  he  said,  at  the  time  of  his 
marriage,  “  There  will  be  one  more  unhappy  princess  in 
the  world.”  Elizabeth  Christine  would  have  liked  noth¬ 
ing  better  than  to  be  a  faithful,  loving,  and  devoted  wife. 
She  repeatedly  declared  that  she  was  ready  to  die  for  the 
king,  and  she  waited  in  hope  and  expectation  that  time 
might  bring  a  change.  Once,  when  she  knew  that  he  was 
coming  to  Berlin,  she  rose  from  a  bed  of  sickness,  declar¬ 
ing  that,  living  or  dead,  she  must  be  there  to  receive  him 
on  his  arrival.  Yet  all  this  devotion  and  humilit3'  never 
softened  the  heart  of  the  man  who  was  its  object.  Fred¬ 
erick  had  once  said  of  his  intended  bride,  u  Let  her  be  as 
frivolous  as  she  pleases,  only  not  simple ;  ”  perhaps  all 


Unhappi¬ 
ness  of 
Elizabeth 
Christine. 


186 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Death 
of  Wil- 
helmine. 


Frederick’s 
guests  at 
Sans  Sotici. 


this  affection  bordered  on  simplicity.  Yet  there  were 
other,  worse  qualities,  such  as  a  proneness  to  suspicion, 
a  moodiness  of  temper,  a  certain  discontent.  At  all 
events,  Frederick  thoroughly  detested  her.  Once,  when 
he  had  arranged  a  little  journey  and  a  festival  for  his 
mother,  Elizabeth  Christine  sent  word  through  her  brother 
that  she  would  like  to  take  part;  but  Frederick  refused, 
on  the  ground  that  she  was  a  simpering  marplot  and  would 
spoil  the  whole  occasion. 

Thus  it  came  about  that  Sans  Souci  was  scarcely  ever 
graced  by  the  presence  of  a  woman.  With  his  sister 
Wilhelmine,  Frederick  had  quarrelled  at  the  time  of  the 
election,  as  emperor,  of  Maria  Theresa’s  husband.  The 
Margravine  of  Baireuth  had  not  been  able  to  refrain  from 
paying  her  respects  to  the  new  empress  and  from  taking 
part  in  the  Frankfort  gayeties.  But  the  breach  had  been 
healed  and  Wilhelmine  for  a  time  had  been  her  brother’s 
guest  at  Potsdam.  Her  death,  on  the  night  of  the  battle 
of  Hochkirch,  was  one  of  the  most  terrible  blows  of  these 
terrible  times. 

Frederick  found  consolation  for  the  lack  of  a  normal 
household  in  his  dumb  beasts  and  in  his  literary  men. 
To  his  dogs  he  was  perfectly  devoted;  they  were  allowed 
the  utmost  liberty,  were  fondly  inquired  after  when  the 
king  was  absent,  and  were  finally  buried  in  the  tomb  he 
had  intended  for  himself.  With  his  horses  it  was  the 
same ;  some  of  them  were  allowed  to  roam  about  at  will, 
and  one,  the  famous  Cond6,  was  even  invited  into  the 
hall  of  Sans  Souci,  where,  according  to  tradition  at  least, 
he  wrought  havoc  to  the  pavement  with  his  heavy  feet. 
The  broken  tile  was  long  shown  to  visitors,  until,  in 
common  with  the  chair-cover  torn  by  the  dogs,  it  ’ 
repaired  by  the  present  ruler. 

One  of  the  first  acts  of  Frederick’s  reign  had  bee 


FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  IN  TIME  OF  PEACE  187 

issue  invitations  to  foreign  celebrities  to  come  and  grace 
his  court.  Many,  like  Vaucanson  and  Gresset,  had  been 
obliged  to  refuse,  but  Maupertuis  —  at  the  height  of  his 
fame  as  Arctic  explorer  and  discoverer  of  the  flattening  of 
the  poles  of  the  earth  —  had  accepted  the  presidency  of  the 
Berlin  academy.  Many  of  the  newcomers  received  sti¬ 
pends,  and  had,  therefore,  to  be  at  the  king’s  beck  and  call. 
A  constant  guest  for  a  time  was  the  Scotchman,  James 
Keith,  who  had  been  a  general  in  the  Russian  service  and 
was  now  made  Prussian  marshal.  He  writes  to  his  brother, 
in  1747 :  “I  enjoy  here  the  distinction  of  eating  with  him 
[the  king]  almost  every  afternoon  and  evening.  He  has 
more  intelligence  and  wit  than  I  can  describe,  and  speaks, 
with  thoroughness  and  technical  knowledge,  about  the 
most  varied  matters.  He  has  surrounded  himself  with 
men  whom  he  treats  perfectly  informally,  almost  like 
friends,  yet  there  is  no  favorite.”  Keith  praises  the  king’s 
habitual  politeness,  but  finds  him  somewhat  inscrutable. 

In  this  familiar  circle  Frederick  passed  merry  evenings, 
playing  the  flute  and  reading  aloud  his  own  odes,  satires, 
and  epistles.  The  want  of  restraint,  however,  was  not 
allowed  to  turn  into  license  —  once  Voltaire  was  roundly 
snubbed,  but  wittily  turned  it  off  with  a  “  Silence,  gen¬ 
tlemen;  the  king  of  Prussia  has  just  come  in.”  Fred¬ 
erick’s  confidence  in  these  friends  went  so  far,  that  he  had 
twelve  copies  struck  off  for  their  benefit,  by  his  own  se¬ 
cret  press,  of  a  somewhat  scandalous  production,  entitled 
Works  of  the  Philosopher  of  Sans  Souci ,  which  ridiculed 
the  church  and  caricatured  half  the  crowned  heads  of 
Europe.  Voltaire’s  criticism  was,  that  the  king  had 
worked  too  fast  to  have  created  a  real  work  of  art;  that 
while  he,  Voltaire,  was  trying  to  better  some  fifty  old 
lines  Frederick  had  composed  four  or  five  hundred  new 


ones. 


188 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


First  meet¬ 
ing  with 
Voltaire. 


Voltaire 
at  Rheins- 
berg. 


Frederick’s  first  meeting  with  the  great  French  poet, 
wit,  and  historian  had  been  in  the  year  of  his  accession, 
although  letters  had  previously  been  interchanged.  The 
young  king  had  written  that  he  could  neither  live  happily 
nor  die  quietly  until  he  should  have  embraced  this  friend  ; 
while  Voltaire  had  answered:  “Simeon  shall  behold  his 
salvation;  the  French  are  Prussians  one  and  all;  my  heart 
proclaims  to  me  that  the  hour  is  nigh  when,  from  the  lips 
of  the  crowned  Apollo,  I  shall  hear  speeches  which  would 
have  been  admired  by  the  wise  men  of  old.”  It  would 
have  been  hard  for  even  a  crowned  Apollo  to  continue  on 
such  a  level,  and  it  is  no  wonder  that  there  was  disap¬ 
pointment  on  both  sides  at  the  first  interview.  Frederick 
was  suffering  from  a  violent  fever,  yet,  as  he  wrote  him¬ 
self  afterward,  “with  people  of  that  stamp  one  has  no 
right  to  be  ill.”  Voltaire  was  fatigued  from  his  journey, 
—  the  meeting  took  place  in  Cleves,  —  he  had  expected 
more  magnificence,  and  he  adopted  an  unpleasant  tone. 
Yet  his  Mahomet ,  which  he  read  aloud,  pleased  the  king 
greatly;  it  seemed  to  him  scintillating  with  ideas. 

Voltaire  was  invited  to  Rheinsberg,  where  the  two 
made  verses,  feasted,  gambled,  and  danced  together;  yet 
here,  too,  there  was  a  slight  trail  of  the  serpent  over  the 
whole.  A  witticism  at  the  expense  of  his  dead  father 
was  taken  very  ill  by  the  king;  Frederick  gained  the 
impression  that  his  guest  was  collecting  material  with 
which  to  make  the  Berliners  ridiculous;  lastly,  the  bill 
for  travelling  expenses,  three  thousand  thalers,  seemed 
exorbitant,  —  a  good  deal  to  pay  for  a  court  fool,  wrote 
Frederick  in  wrath.  But,  worst  of  all,  the  man  of  letters 
had  agreed  to  play  the  political  spy  for  the  French  king; 
though  to  worm  a  secret  from  this  young  Hohenzollern 
was  more  even  than  a  Voltaire  could  accomplish. 

In  spite  of  all  this,  we  see  Voltaire  frequently  receiv- 


FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  IN  TIME  OF  PEACE  189 


ing  and  refusing  invitations  to  the  Prussian  court,  — the 
secret  of  the  refusal  being,  however,  that  the  “divine 
Emily,”  the  Marquise  du  Chatelet,  had  not  been  invited 
to  accompany  her  famous  adorer.  To  a  hint  in  that  direc¬ 
tion  Frederick  had  answered,  that  two  such  divinities 
would  dazzle  his  eyes  out.  He  had  once  sarcastically  re¬ 
marked  of  this  woman’s  literary  efforts,  that  she  always 
started  to  write,  the  moment  she  began  her  studies ;  and 
that  her  friends  should  advise  her  to  educate  her  son  and 
not  the  world. 

But  in  1749  Emily  died  in  childbirth;  Voltaire’s  posi¬ 
tion  as  regarded  the  French  court  was  not  all  that  he  could 
have  wished,  and,  after  some  hesitation,  he  accepted  Fred¬ 
erick’s  renewed  offer.  The  latter  was  too  shrewd  not  to 
know  by  this  time  with  what  kind  of  a  man  he  had  to 
deal;  in  a  letter  he  calls  Voltaire  an  ape  who  deserves 
to  be  chased  from  the  temple  of  the  Muses.  But  he  longed 
to  have  this  acknowledged  master  of  the  French  language 
correct  his  own  verses.  “I  need  his  French,”  he  wrote; 
“why  should  I  trouble  about  his  morals?”  Moreover,  he 
really  worshipped  Voltaire’s  genius,  which,  he  was  sure, 
would  prove  immortal.  He  burned  to  be  able  to  catch  from 
his  very  lips  the  words  that  must  seem  so  much  colder 
when  transferred  to  paper. 

At  a  hint  concerning  the  travelling  expenses,  Frederick 
sent  a  poem  to  announce  that  a  golden  shower  was  about 
to  descend  upon  his  Danae;  and  was  told  in  return  that 
this  special,  antiquated  Danae  loved  her  Jupiter  and  not 
his  gold.  All  the  same,  the  travelling  expenses  were 
reckoned  at  four  thousand  thalers,  and  a  salary  accepted 
of  five  thousand  more — besides  board  and  lodging,  and  the 
ordre  pour  le  merite.  Further  advantages  —  not  to  speak 
of  the  joy  of  living  in  such  a  lovely  jewelled  nest  as 
Sans  Souci  —  were  the  king’s  delight  in  prose  and  poetry ; 


Voltaire  at 
Sans  Souci. 


190 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Voltaire’s 

escapades. 


his  friendly  attentions,  “  which  were  enough  to  turn  one’s 
head;  ”  and  the  perfect  freedom  of  intercourse.  “I  am  so 
presumptuous  as  to  think,”  Voltaire  exclaims,  “that 
nature  created  me  for  him.”  “ I  forget,”  he  goes  on,  “that 
he  is  the  ruler  of  half  Germany  and  that  the  other  half 
trembles  at  his  name ;  that  he  has  won  five  battles  and  is 
the  greatest  general  in  Europe.  .  .  .  The  philosopher 
has  reconciled  me  to  the  monarch.” 

“  II  est  grand  roi  tout  le  matin , 

Apres  diner  grand  ecrivain  ; 

Tout  le  jour  philo sophe  humain 
Et  le  soir  convive  diving 

Others  received  Voltaire  well  beside  the  king.  As  he 
walked  to  the  royal  box  on  the  occasion  of  a  great  run¬ 
ning  at  the  ring,  held  in  the  square  before  the  Berlin 
castle,  the  Frenchman  could  hear  the  murmurs  of  admira¬ 
tion,  and  his  own  name  passing  from  lip  to  lip.  Well 
might  he  write  home  that  he  seemed  to  have  reached  port 
after  thirty  years  of  storm.  That  this  idyllic  state  of 
things  did  not  continue  longer  was  the  poet’s  own  fault. 
He  was  like  a  kangaroo  (the  simile  was  Frederick’s) : 
there  was  no  knowing  where  his  next  leap  might  land 
him.  One  of  his  escapades  was  to  employ  the  pawnbroker 
Hirscliel  to  buy  up  bills  in  Saxony  against  the  Saxon 
exchequer  —  the  Peace  of  Breslau  having  provided  that, 
when  owned  by  Prussians,  these  notes  must  be  honored  in 
full.  To  make  the  affair  still  more  scandalous,  there  fol¬ 
lowed  a  lawsuit  with  Hirschel,  in  the  course  of  which 
Voltaire  was  generally  believed  to  have  falsified  records, 
and  to  have  substituted  paste  for  real  diamonds  left  with 
him  as  security.  “Voltaire  is  outswindling  the  Jews,” 
wrote  Frederick,  and  bade  him  have  no  more  dealings  of 
the  kind  “  either  with  the  Old  or  the  New  Testament.”  If 


FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  IN  TIME  OF  PEACE  191 


he  is  to  continue  at  Sans  Souci  he  must  control  his  passions 
and  live  more  like  a  philosopher. 

The  jealousies  of  the  coterie  of  learned  men  made 
matters  more  than  lively  at  the  Prussian  court.  Voltaire 
had  procured  the  banishment  of  a  certain  D’Arnaud, 
whose  only  apparent  crime  was,  that  Frederick  had  saluted 
him,  in  a  poem,  as  the  rising  sun  that  was  to  take  the 
place  of  the  waning  Apollo  of  France.  The  scientist  La 
Mettrie  caused  that  same  waning  Apollo  moments  of  the 
bitterest  anguish,  by  declaring  that  the  king  had  com¬ 
pared  him  to  an  orange,  which,  in  another  year,  he  would 
squeeze  dry  and  throw  away.  Voltaire  comes  back  to  the 
matter  again  and  again ;  he  broods  over  it,  he  writes  about 
it;  and,  when  La  Mettrie  unexpectedly  dies,  his  one  grief 
is,  that  now  the  truth  about  the  orange  will  never  be  fully 
known. 

The  crisis  was  brought  about  by  a  quarrel  between 
Maupertuis  and  one  Konig,  in  which  Voltaire  was  the 
violent  partisan  of  the  latter.  Konig  maintained  that 
one  of  the  vaunted  discoveries  of  the  scientist  —  it  con¬ 
cerned  the  minimum  of  force  —  was  one  that  the  great 
Leibnitz  had  written  about,  only  to  show  its  hollowness. 
His  authority,  he  said,  was  a  private  letter  of  Leibnitz ; 
which,  however,  though  it  really  did  exist,  he  was  unable 
to  produce  when  called  upon,  and  was,  accordingly,  ex¬ 
pelled  from  the  academy.  Voltaire  upheld  him  with  fiery 
enthusiasm  and  perpetrated  a  number  of  scurrilous  satires 
against  the  “globe-flattener,”  Maupertuis,  which  culmi¬ 
nated  in  the  famous  Diatribe  du  docteur  Akakia. 

Furious  at  having  one-half  of  his  intellectual  household 
thus  arrayed  against  the  other  to  the  delight  of  the  outer 
world,  Frederick  ordered  the  edition  of  Dr.  Akakia  sup¬ 
pressed;  and  when  another  appeared  in  Dresden,  com¬ 
manded  that  the  volume  should  be  burnt  by  the  common 


Jealousies 
at  Sans 
Souci. 


Arrest  of 
Voltaire. 


192 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Frederick 
as  a 

musician 
and  as  an 
author. 


v 


hangman  in  front  of  the  door  of  its  author.  This  was  too 
much  even  for  the  small-souled  Frenchman,  and  Voltaire 
tendered  the  resignation  of  all  his  dignities.  The  king 
finally  let  him  go,  but  requested  him  to  leave  behind  that 
pledge  of  a  former  intimacy,  the  (Euvres  du  Philosophe  de 
Sans  Souci.  Whether  by  accident  or  by  design  the  order 
was  not  obeyed;  and  Frederick,  just  starting  off  for  East 
Prussia,  ordered  his  representative  in  Frankfort  to  seize 
the  favored  son  of  the  Muses,  and  take  the  book  from  his 
baggage.  The  order  was  too  literally  obeyed.  The  volume 
was  among  the  effects  that  Voltaire  had  left  behind  him 
in  Leipzig ;  it  was  weeks  before  it  could  be  procured,  and 
even  then  the  poet  was  held  still  longer  on  a  charge  of 
attempt  at  flight.  A  trying  ordeal  indeed  for  a  fiery  char¬ 
acter  like  Voltaire!  All  his  pent-up  bitterness  finally 
found  vent  in  the  Vie  privee  du  roi  de  Prusse,  a  writing 
well  designated  as  “  one  of  the  most  malignant  and  men¬ 
dacious,  yet  one  of  the  most  deadly,  satires  in  the  whole 
range  of  literature.” 

That  Frederick,  in  spite  of  such  episodes,  found  time 
and  inclination  to  attend  to  his  own  musical  and  literary 
labors  argues  well  for  his  powers  of  concentration.  He  had 
learned  to  play  the  flute  under  the  famous  Quantz ;  a  part 
of  his  morning  was  regularly  devoted  to  practising,  and 
nearly  every  evening  he  played  in  concert.  He  has  left 
behind  him  121  flute  sonatas  of  his  own  composition, 
beside  a  number  of  military  marches,  which  are  so  tuneful 
as  immediately  to  attract  attention  when  played  by  mod¬ 
ern  bands.  Besides  this,  Frederick’s  literary  works  of 
different  kinds  fill  twenty  large  printed  volumes.  His 
PListoire  de  mon  temps ,  written,  like  all  his  other  produc¬ 
tions,  in  French,  is  considered  the  most  remarkable  pro¬ 
duction  of  its  kind  since  Csesar  wrote  his  commentaries.  It 
is  partisan,  of  course ;  from  first  to  last  Frederick  is  writing 


FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  IN  TIME  OF  PEACE  193 


a  sort  of  glorification  of  himself,  his  house,  and  his  work. 
But,  apart  from  this,  Frederick  writes  as  only  a  chief 
participant  ever  can  write,  and  tells  us  much  that  could 
never  otherwise  have  become  known.  Within  his  general 
limits,  he  is  just,  fair,  frank,  and  outspoken. 

Nor  must  it  be  imagined  that  these  matters  took  up 
even  the  principal  part  of  the  time  of  this  most  indefati¬ 
gable  of  all  monarchs.  By  rising  at  three  and  four  o’clock, 
he  was  able  to  transact  the  current  affairs  of  a  great  and 
important  state  and  to  receive  each  day  a  number  of  humble 
petitioners,  whose  cases  were  almost  always  disposed  of 
within  the  twenty-four  hours.  “You  are  correct,”  he 
writes  to  Jordan  in  1742,  “in  thinking  that  I  work  hard; 
I  do  it  to  live,  for  nothing  is  more  like  death  than  idle¬ 
ness.”  “The  people  are  not  there  for  the  sake  of  the 
rulers,  but  the  rulers  for  the  sake  of  the  people,”  he  writes 
in  one  of  his  essays ;  nor  was  it  a  figure  of  speech  when  he 
declared  that  the  king  was  merely  the  first  servant  of  the 
state.  He  objected  at  all  times  to  being  placed  on  a 
higher  plane,  and  caused  the  prayer  for  himself  in  the 
church  service,  which  asked  favor  for  “his  Majesty,”  to 
be  changed  to :  “  O  Lord,  we  commend  to  Thee,  Thy 
servant  our  king.” 

This  man  was  the  very  incorporation  of  the  German 
“ Pflicht.”  Among  the  effects  of  one  of  his  cabinet  coun¬ 
cillors,  and  only  for  the  years  1746  to  1752,  there  were 
found  some  twelve  thousand  royal  decisions.  The  posi¬ 
tion  of  these  councillors,  as  may  be  imagined,  was  no 
sinecure ;  obliged  to  appear  at  five  and  six  in  the  morning, 
they  remained  standing  until  the  last  bit  of  business  was 
transacted.  One  of  them  fell  down  dead  in  this  fatiguing 
exercise  of  his  duties.  Ministers,  councillors,  and  officials 
of  all  kinds  were,  to  a  large  extent,  automatons,  and  were 
often  treated  and  scolded  like  children.  “  You  are  all  of 


Frederick’s 
great  in¬ 
dustry. 


Frederick’s 

councillors. 


VOL.  II  —  o 


194 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Humane 

measures. 


you  first-rate  cheats,  and  not  worth  your  bread,”  Frederick 
writes  to  a  board  of  magistrates.  “  You  ought  to  be  driven 
out;  just  wait  till  I  get  to  Prussia!  ”  He  calls  his  gen¬ 
eral  directory  impertinent,  corrupt,  ignorant,  even  out  and 
out  canaille ;  he  threatens  to  cut  off  Podewils’s  head.  An 
official  who  wished  for  leave  of  absence  in  order  to  go  to 
a  watering-place,  is  told  that  he  is  a  fool  to  throw  away 
his  money. 

When  it  so  pleased  him  Frederick  transacted  the  most 
important  business  —  issued  manifestoes  or  treated  con¬ 
cerning  war  and  peace  —  without  consulting  or  even 
informing  his  ministers.  It  was  paternal  government 
carried  to  its  utmost  lengths ;  every  official  knew  that  at 
any  moment  the  king’s  sharp  glance  might  be  prying  into 
his  affairs  and  detecting  the  weak  points  of  his  adminis¬ 
tration.  There  was  no  mere  routine  work  about  it,  for 
Frederick  was  a  born  reformer,  never  contented  with  ex¬ 
isting  conditions.  His  activity  extended  in  all  directions 
— to  criminal  and  civil  justice,  to  the  army,  to  the  finances, 
to  the  betterment  of  social  conditions,  to  the  improvement 
of  agriculture  and  trade. 

But  four  days  had  elapsed  after  his  father’s  death, 
before  he  had  issued  an  edict  to  his  judges  that  torture 
was  no  longer  to  be  employed  in  criminal  investigations 
—  though,  strangely  enough,  he  considered  it  more  salu¬ 
tary  for  the  people  not  to  know  of  the  change.  Judges 
were  instructed,  always  to  weigh  the  question  as  to 
whether  this  form  of  proof  should  be  resorted  to,  but 
always  to  decide  in  the  negative.  Frederick  abolished, 
too,  the  barbarous  custom  by  which  women  convicted  of 
slaying  their  offspring  were  to  be  drowned  in  leather 
sacks  of  their  own  sewing.  Certain  arbitrary  hindrances 
to  marriage  were  also  to  be  laid  aside.  At  the  same  time 
religious  toleration  was  enjoined  in  the  strictest  terms: 


FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  IN  TIME  OF  PEACE  195 


“  If  Turks  and  heathen  should  come  to  populate  the  land, 
we  would  build  them  mosques  and  churches;  ”  and  again, 
“  All  religions  must  be  tolerated  .  .  .  here  every  one  shall 
get  to  heaven  in  his  own  fashion !  ”  Catholics  were  told  that 
they  could  build  their  churches  “as  high  as  they  pleased 
and  with  as  many  towers  and  bells.”  Yet,  in  practice, 
against  the  Jews  Frederick  made  an  exception :  not  because 
of  their  beliefs,  but  because  of  qualities  that  he  considered 
inherent  in  the  race.  Each  head  of  a  family  was  obliged  to 
have  a  written  permit  to  live  in  his  district,  and  a  given  total 
was  never  to  be  exceeded.  The  poor  wretches  were  pushed 
about,  expelled  from  this  or  that  locality,  encouraged 
where  it  was  thought  they  might  prove  useful,  and  bur¬ 
dened  with  a  number  of  galling  conditions.  Each  new 
settler  was  made  to  buy  a  certain  amount  of  porcelain 
from  the  royal  manufactory;  nor  might  he  use  his  own 
judgment,  but  must  needs  take  what  was  allotted  to  him, 
and  at  a  fixed  price.  Even  then,  he  might  not  enjoy  his 
own  purchase,  but  was  bound  to  send  it  out  of  the  country. 

In  the  matter  of  civil  lawsuits  Frederick  employed  the 
learned  Coccei  to  make  a  clean  sweep  of  abuses  that  had 
turned  the  Prussian  courts  into  a  perfect  Augean  stable. 
Barristers,  advocates,  and  notaries  had  been  fattening  on 
the  fees  of  cases  that  had  been  allowed  to  drag  along  for 
ten,  twenty,  yes,  for  two  hundred  years.  The  acts  in  a 
dispute  concerning  one  little  village  boundary  filled 
seventy  folio  volumes.  Coccei  was  sent  from  town  to 
town  and  from  district  to  district,  and  in  Pomerania 
alone,  in  the  course  of  eight  months,  had  settled  some 
twenty -four  hundred  old  cases.  No  case  in  future  was  to 
occupy,  at  the  utmost,  more  than  one  year. 

Unlike  his  father,  Frederick  made  it  a  rule  not  to  in¬ 
terfere  with  sentences  passed  by  the  regular  courts;  he 
had  once  declared  that  no  one  was  to  obey  him  should  he 


Reform  in 
law  pro¬ 
cedure. 


196 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  case  of 

Miller 

Arnold. 


Healing  the 
wounds  of 
war. 


take  such  liberties  with  the  law.  He  was  rather  pleased 
when  a  man,  whose  mill  adjoined  Sans  Souci  and  who  had 
refused  to  sell  at  the  king’s  price,  told  him  to  his  face,  in 
answer  to  his  half  threat  of  dispossession,  that  there  were 
courts  of  justice  in  Berlin.  But  in  one  famous  case,  — 
that  of  the  miller  Arnold,  —  Frederick,  suspecting  that 
a  bench  of  aristocratic  judges  were  denying  justice  to  a 
poor  man,  threw  himself  heart  and  soul  into  the  cause 
and  constituted  himself  supreme1  judge.  The  judges 
of  the  New  Mark,  by  whom  the  case  had  first  been 
decided,  were  told  that  they  were  not  worth  a  charge  of 
powder  and  that  they  might  all  go  to  the  devil.  When 
the  Berlin  court  rendered  a  similar  decision,  the  grand 
chancellor  and  three  of  his  associates  were  summoned  to 
the  palace,  where  they  found  themselves  in  the  path  of  a 
cyclone.  How  in  the  world,  thundered  the  king,  could  a 
miller  earn  his  living  if  the  water  was  shut  off  from  his 
mill?  When  the  canaille ,  as  he  called  them,  tried  to 
explain  that  no  possible  injury  had  been  done  to  Arnold, 
they  were  told  to  hold  their  tongues;  while  the  grand 
chancellor  was  suddenly  dismissed  from  the  office  he  had 
held  for  years  with  a  curt  “Get  out!  Your  place  has  been 
given  to  another.”  Cruel  indignities  were  then  inflicted 
on  all  concerned. 

In  all  this  Frederick  was  absolutely  and  entirely  in  the 
wrong,  although  he  would  never  publicly  acknowledge  it. 
That  was  his  way ;  it  would  be  bad  for  the  people  to  think 
him  capable  of  error.  But  in  private  he  wrote,  “I  have 
been  too  hasty  —  curse  the  fellow!  ” 

The  country  benefited  indirectly  from  the  incident  from 
the  fact  that  the  expelled  chancellor’s  successor  was  that 
Carmer  who  codified  the  Prussian  common  law,  giving  it 
the  form  it  was  to  retain  until  the  introduction  of  the 
German  common  law  in  the  year  1900.  This  matter,  as  well 


FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  IN  TIME  OF  PEACE  197 


as  Frederick’s  other  endeavors  for  the  good  of  his  people, 
had  been  sadly  interrupted  by  the  Seven  Years’  War. 
The  country  had  been  at  the  mercy  of  invading  armies ; 
anarchy  had  taken  the  place  of  order ;  whole  cities  had  been 
plundered  and  burned.  Frederick  himself  reckoned  that 
thirteen  thousand  houses  had  vanished  without  leaving  a 
trace.  He  likens  his  land  to  a  man  covered  with  wounds 
and  exhausted  from  loss  of  blood.  The  condition  of  the 
people  was  indeed  appalling  —  how  appalling  may  be 
gathered  from  the  fact  that  in  the  city  of  Berlin,  which 
had  scarcely  been  touched  by  the  enemy,  one-third  of  the 
inhabitants  were  forced  to  live  on  the  charity  of  the 
rest. 

But  paternal  government  has  its  advantages ;  never  did 
any  man  more  thoroughly  accept  his  responsibilities  than 
did  Frederick  at  this  crisis.  He  set  himself  the  definite 
task  of  freeing  his  country,  within  two  years,  from  every 
trace  of  the  war;  even  before  he  reentered  his  capital, 
after  an  absence  of  six  years,  he  had  made  arrangements 
for  the  provinces  through  which  he  passed.  With  an  iron 
determination  never  to  cease  fighting  until  an  advanta¬ 
geous  peace  should  have  been  secured,  he  had  made  himself 
entirely  ready  for  a  new  campaign,  and  had  in  hand  a  fund 
of  20,000,000  thalers,  besides  thousands  of  horses,  and 
stores  of  provisions  and  grain.  Right  and  left,  now,  he 
distributed  this  wealth  —  never  rashly,  never  thought¬ 
lessly,  but  always  after  the  most  searching  inquiry  into 
the  nature  of  the  needs.  “  I  must  look  through  and  cor¬ 
rect  still  more  accounts,”  he  writes  to  his  brother  in  July, 
1763.  44 .  .  .  It  has  been  going  on  like  this  without 

interruption  for  four  months.  ...  I  have  also  to  pro¬ 
vide  Berlin  with  wood  for  the  coming  winter.”  In  Sile¬ 
sia,  where  the  ravages  of  war  had  been  most  constant,  he 
freed  the  people  from  their  taxes  for  six  months,  rebuilt 


i 


198 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Frederick’s 
inflation  of 
the  coinage. 


8000  houses,  and  gave  17,000  horses  for  agriculture, 
besides  an  immense  amount  of  grain  for  seed.  Appli¬ 
cants  who  seemed  to  Frederick  undeserving  went  empty 
away.  “I  won’t  give  the  low-lived  rabble  a  groschen,”  he 
said  of  the  burghers  of  Potsdam ;  and  to  a  landrath  who 
wanted  compensation  for  personal  losses :  “  At  the  day  of 
judgment  each  man  will  regain  what  he  has  been  deprived 
of  in  this  life.”  One  of  his  most  salutary  acts  was  to  dis¬ 
miss  to  their  homes  some  30,000  soldiers,  that  they  might 
aid  in  the  cultivation  of  the  fields. 

The  most  arbitrary,  and  perhaps  the  most  characteristic, 
of  Frederick’s  measures  at  this  time,  was  his  treatment  of 
the  currency  and  of  the  obligations  of  the  state  toward  its 
creditors.  His  strategy  in  this  respect  was  as  brilliant, 
and  involved  as  much  immediate  suffering,  as  in  the  case 
of  any  of  his  battles.  It  is  surely  an  all  but  incredible 
record  for  Prussia  to  have  emerged  from  this  unequal  war 
practically  freed  from  debt;  at  the  very  darkest  hour  the 
taxes  had  not  been  raised,  no  loan  negotiated.  Yet  almost 
as  incredible  were  the  means  that  had  been  employed  to 
achieve  this  end.  The  war  fund  left  by  Frederick  Will¬ 
iam  I.,  the  English  subsidies,  even  the  heavy  contribu¬ 
tions  levied  on  the  conquered  lands  and  provinces,  had 
not  nearly  sufficed  for  the  never  ending  outlays;  the  re¬ 
mainder  had  to  be  raised  by  holding  back  the  salaries  of  the 
civil  officials  and  paying  them  in  promissory  notes,  and 
by  inflating  and  adulterating  the  coinage  to  the  last 
degree.  And  when  the  moment  for  redemption  came  the 
doors  were  closed.  Simple  edicts  restored  the  coinage  to 
its  normal  basis ;  the  promissory  notes  were  paid  in  the 
old  currency ;  but  that  currency  itself  was  redeemed  at  but 
one-fifth  of  its  face  value.  The  hard- worked  servants  of 
the  state  were  those  on  whom  the  heaviest  burden  fell.  It 
was  cruel  and  unjust,  a  practical  declaration  of  bankruptcy ; 


FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  IN  TIME  OF  PEACE  199 


yet  Prussia  stood  thereby  at  an  immense  advantage  over 
her  debt-laden  rivals. 

To  bettering  the  general  conditions  of  his  lands  Fred¬ 
erick  now  bent  every  energy.  Those  gay  suppers  in  Sans 
Souci  had  ceased  forever;  it  was  even  noticed  that  the 
king  showed  less  care  for  the  neatness  of  his  person.  His 
head  was  full  of  plans  for  draining  and  settling  new  lands, 
and  for  furthering  agriculture  and  commerce.  The  num¬ 
ber  of  colonists  that  were  induced  to  come  to  Prussia 
during  his  reign  has  been  carefully  estimated  at  nearly 
300,000;  900  new  villages  were  founded.  Add  to  this, 
that  the  army  contained  some  80,000  to  90,000  foreigners, 
many  of  whom  remained  permanently  in  the  land.  This 
so-called  colonization  was  carried  on  with  the  utmost  sys¬ 
tem  and  regularity.  Frederick  followed  every  rise  of 
taxes,  every  national  calamity  that  occurred  in  neighbor¬ 
ing  lands ;  when  the  town  of  Grossenhain  burnt  down,  his 
agents  were  sent  to  the  spot  to  lead  the  sufferers  to  the 
land  of  promise.  The  underlying  idea  of  all  this  was,  that 
Prussia  must  be  made  to  produce  at  home  all,  and  more 
than  all,  that  the  people  needed;  if  artisans  of  a  certain 
kind  were  wanting  search  was  made  for  them  far  and  wide. 
Butter-makers  from  Holland  were  in  great  demand,  as  were 
also  persons  who  had  had  experience  with  the  manufacture 
of  silk. 

This  latter  industry,  the  most  exotic  that  Prussians  had 
ever  undertaken,  was  actually  made  to  flourish;  although 
but  one-sixth  of  the  raw  material  could  be  grown  in  the 
land  itself.  Frederick  tried  to  make  it  a  part  of  the  occu¬ 
pation  of  preachers  and  sextons,  in  their  cemeteries,  and 
schoolmasters,  in  their  yards,  to  grow  mulberry  trees  for 
the  cultivation  of  the  worm ;  and  he  issued  comprehensive 
edicts  on  the  subject.  It  would  be  so  simple,  he  declared, 
if  only  the  wives  and  children  would  look  after  the  cocoons. 


The  favor¬ 
ing  of  im¬ 
migration. 


The  manu¬ 
facture  of 
silk. 


200 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OR  GERMANY 


Reclaiming 
of  waste 
lands. 


Protective 

duties. 


In  spite  of  the  rivalry  of  France,  where  climate  and  the 
price  of  labor  were  far  more  favorable,  it  was  calculated 
that,  in  1796,  no  less  than  12,000  Prussians  were  engaged 
in  the  manufacture  of  silk.  Colonists  were  paid  so  much 
for  every  loom  they  set  up,  and  were  protected,  besides, 
by  heavy  duties  placed  on  foreign  importations.  Fred¬ 
erick  considered  every  penny  that  went  out  of  the  land 
as  wasted.  “If  a  man  has  a  purse  of  five  score  ducats,” 
he  wrote,  “  and  draws  one  out  every  twenty-four  hours, 
without  putting  anything  back,  —  at  the  end  of  a  hundred 
days  he  will  have  nothing  left.” 

The  greatest  privileges  and  inducements,  indeed,  were 
offered  to  all  these  newcomers,  Frederick  expending  on 
them  directly  some  25,000,000  thalers.  A  part  of  the 
travelling  expenses,  proportioned  to  the  distance  and  to 
the  size  of  the  families,  was  regularly  paid;  aid  in  the 
shape  of  building  materials,  or  even  of  money,  was  fur¬ 
nished;  while  exemptions  were  granted  from  customs 
duties,  from  state  and  communal  taxes,  and  from  liability 
to  military  service.  The  farmer  received  his  cattle,  his 
seed,  and  his  tools ;  the  manufacturer  was  encouraged  to 
start  new  industries. 

On  the  fertile  land  along  the  Oder,  which  was  reclaimed 
by  draining  and  by  building  dams,  some  1200  families 
were  established.  “I  have  won  a  province,”  Frederick 
exclaimed  as  he  gazed  on  the  225,000  acres  that  were  thus 
rescued  from  the  waters.  Along  the  Warthe,  the  Vistula, 
and  the  Netze  operations  were  undertaken  on  the  same 
gigantic  scale ;  and  it  may  be  roughly  estimated  that,  in 
all,  from  1500  to  2000  square  miles  were  thus  recovered. 

The  desire  to  protect  home  industries  and  to  cut  off 
every  chance  of  competition  from  foreign  markets,  led 
Frederick  into  passing  the  most  unpopular  measures  of 
his  whole  reign.  Heavy  duties  were  placed  upon  almost 


FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  IN  TIME  OF  PEACE  201 


every  article,  and  the  pettiest  means  resorted  to  in  order  to 
prevent  smuggling.  People  were  stopped,  not  only  at  the 
city  gates,  but  also  in  the  streets;  their  houses  were 
entered  at  will  and  every  corner  searched;  while  the  bur¬ 
den  of  proving  that  the  goods  were  not  contraband  rested 
with  the  owners.  Moreover,  when  the  duties,  although 
levied  on  some  3000  articles,  failed  to  produce  the  expected 
revenue,  Frederick  chanced  on  the  evil  idefi  of  putting 
the  direction  of  the  whole  matter  into  the  hands  of  a  board 
of  Frenchmen.  With  a  horde  of  subordinates,  they  fell 
upon  the  land;  in  addition  to  their  salaries  they  were  to 
have  five  per  cent  of  all  profits  which  should  exceed  the 
estimates  of  1765  and  1766.  Their  official  title  was, 
administration  generate  des  accises  et  geages,  and  they  un¬ 
folded  a  system  of  espionage  which  was  perfectly  odious 
to  the  Germans.  Coffee  was  one  of  the  articles  most  gen¬ 
erally  used  and  most  frequently  smuggled:  Frederick,  in 
his  paternal  fashion,  told  his  subjects  that  it  was  not  good 
for  them  to  drink  it;  that  he  himself  had  been  raised  on 
beer  soup ;  that  if  they  would  persist  he  should  feel  obliged 
to  impose  a  duty  of  250  per  cent.  In  order  more  absolutely 
to  control  its  use,  it  was  decreed  that  no  one  should  burn 
it  or  grind  it  at  home,  but  only  in  the  royal  mills ;  where, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  it  was  sold  at  treble  its  worth.  Regu¬ 
larly  appointed  “coffee-smellers”  went  from  house  to 
house,  to  see  that  the  command  was  obeyed.  Nor  did  the 
new  system  help  matters  in  the  least:  as  nearly  as  we  can 
estimate,  two-thirds  of  the  coffee  used  in  Prussia  was 
brought  in  by  unlawful  means;  and  disorders  of  every 
kind  resulted,  culminating  in  violence  and  murder. 

Only  the  boundless  love  and  devotion  the  people  felt  for 
the  person  of  their  “Fritz”  prevented  more  serious  out¬ 
breaks.  Once,  on  an  afternoon  drive,  he  came  upon  an 
excited  crowd  grouped  around  a  caricature  of  himself 


202 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  w'  GERMANY 


Frederick 
as  drill 
master. 


in  which  he  was  represented  as  holding  a  can  of  coffee  on 
his  knee.  Stopping  his  horses  he  bade  them  lower  the 
picture  that  it  might  be  the  better  seen  —  whereat  the 
scowls  melted  into  rapturous  approval. 

Frederick  would  not  have  been  a  Hohenzollern  had  not 
the  army,  in  the  ultimate  instance,  been  his  chief  care. 
Like  his  father,  he  managed  everything  about  it  in  person, 
himself  training  and  drilling  the  troops  that  he  led  to 
battle;  he  caused  minute  reports  to  be  drawn  up,  from 
which  he  learned  the  capacities  and  the  special  good  and 
bad  qualities  of  every  regiment.  Officers  and  soldiers  alike 
were  subjected  to  hard,  serious  work,  and  were  given  but 
small  pay.  Nor  were  there  any  regular  pensions  even  for 
those  who  had  distinguished  themselves,  or  been  wounded, 
in  the  field.  The  king’s  chief  device  was,  to  appoint  his 
retired  subalterns  to  positions  as  country  schoolmasters, 
irrespectively,  it  would  seem,  of  their  qualifications.  Here 
they  would  be  sure,  at  least,  of  a  beggarly  pittance  for  the 
rest  of  their  days.  The  common  soldier,  under  this  reign, 
was  a  mere  part  of  the  machine ;  and,  being  usually  of  poor 
stuff  at  the  outset,  had  too  often  to  be  flogged  into  shape. 
The  discipline  was  extraordinarily  severe;  running  the 
gauntlet  proved  fatal  in  dozens  of  instances,  and  it  was 
expressly  made  known  that  a  certain  amount  of  harshness 
was  considered  no  discredit  to  an  officer.  It  was  the  king’s 
wish  that  the  rank  and  file  should  dread  those  in  command 
more  than  they  did  the  enemy. 

Frederick  spared  himself  as  little  as  he  did  his  men; 
during  the  manoeuvres  he  would  rise  at  two  o’clock. 
Before  the  end  of  his  reign  he  had  increased  the  total  of 
his  soldiers  to  two  hundred  thousand,  an  enormous  ratio 
to  the  small  number  of  Prussia’s  inhabitants.  Going  the 
rounds  of  his  provinces  every  year,  he  inspected  each  sepa¬ 
rate  regiment,  introducing  a  number  of  reforms  —  such  as 


FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  IN  TIME  OF  PEACE  203 


lightening  the  cavalry  and  infantry, —  and  providing  a  new 
trigger  that  enabled  the  men  to  shoot  as  often  as  six  times 
in  the  minute. 

The  officers  of  the  Prussian  army  were  almost  exclu¬ 
sively  nobles ;  they  alone  were  supposed  by  the  king  to 
have  a  well-developed  sense  of  honor.  Frederick  believed, 
and  said  openly,  that  on  them  depended  the  security  of  the 
state.  All  able-bodied  nobles  were,  therefore,  practically 
obliged  to  become  officers;  and  there  were  times  in  the 
Seven  Years’  War  when,  even  then,  there  were  not  enough. 
Commoners  were  taken  in,  but  were  dismissed  or  degraded 
as  soon  as  the  war  was  over.  This  sacred  caste  of  men  of 
high  birth  was  to  be  fostered  in  every  way.  Frederick 
gave  millions  to  pay  their  debts  and  prevent  the  alienation 
of  their  lands ;  he  exempted  them  from  the  excise  taxes 
and  from  the  odious  presence  of  the  coffee-smellers.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  noble  was  never  to  disgrace  his  rank 
by  engaging  in  trade,  nor  might  he  marry  out  of  his  own 
sphere.  Hussar  officers  were  never  to  marry  at  all;  while 
others  had  to  beg  permission,  which  was  not  always 
granted.  The  king  did  not  wish,  he  said,  to  see  a  regular 
“weepy  weep  ”  every  time  the  troops  marched  out  to  war. 
The  observance  of  the  difference  in  rank  went  so  far  that 
a  noble  might  never  acquire  a  farm  or  peasant  estate ;  he 
alone  was  entitled  to  wear  a  feather  in  his  cap ;  at  public 
festivals  his  end  of  the  room  was  barred  off  from  the  com¬ 
mon  herd;  while,  at  masquerades,  he  alone  might  wear 
the  pink  domino. 

The  peasants,  who  formed  the  bulk  of  the  army,  were 
not  exactly  slaves ;  for  they  could  not  be  arbitrarily  bought 
and  sold,  except  as  a  part  of  the  lands  on  which  they 
dwelt.  But  they  still  had  to  give  to  their  lords  a  very 
large  proportion  of  their  time  and  of  their  produce ;  while 
the  lords,  in  turn,  had  many  ways  of  inflicting  hardships. 


Nobles  as 
officers. 


Hardships 
of  the 
peasants. 


204 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  ;MANY 


The  first 
partition 
Poland. 


and  punishments  upon  them.  Their  children  were  forced 
to  be  household  servants  for  the  term  of  five  years,  and 
without  pay.  Frederick  recognized  the  existence  of  great 
evils  in  this  regard,  but  tried  in  vain  to  remove  them.  A 
decree  abolishing  serfdom  in  Pomerania  was  rescinded  be¬ 
cause  of  representations  on  the  part  of  the  nobles ;  and  the 
matter  remained  in  abeyance  until  the  days  of  Baron  Stein. 

Although  the  first  half  of  Frederick’s  reign  was  almost 
wholly  warlike  and  the  last  half  almost  wholly  peaceful, 
the  amount  of  territory  acquired  in  each  was  very  nearly 
equal :  fierce  struggles  against  a  world  in  arms  had  gained 
and  kept  Silesia,  while,  eleven  years  later,  a  stretch  of 
land  of  similar  dimensions  was  won  by  purely  diplomatic 
arts.  By  the  first  partition  of  Poland,  in  1772,  there  came 
to  the  share  of  Prussia  that  portion  of  the  land  of  the 
Teutonic  Order  which  had  fallen  absolutely  to  its  Slavic 
conqueror  by  the  Treaty  of  Thorn,  in  1466.  This  territory 
had  been  known  by  the  name  of  West  Prussia  —  in  con¬ 
tradistinction  to  East  Prussia,  which,  though  in  feudal 
dependence  to  Poland,  had  yet  remained  the  property  of 
the  order,  and  had  eventually  found  its  way  into  the  hands 
of  the  Hohenzollerns.  On  the  whole,  it  may  be  doubted 
whether,  for  Frederick  the  Great,  West  Prussia  was  not  a 
more  valuable  acquisition  than  even  Silesia.  To  be  sure, 
the  natural  resources  of  the  land  were  infinitely  inferior, 
and  the  important  towns  of  Danzig  and  Thorn  were  ex¬ 
cepted  from  the  cession.  But  West  Prussia  had  hitherto 
completely  cut  in  two  the  possessions  of  the  Hohenzollerns, 
which  now  stretched  in  an  unbroken  line  from  the  borders 
of  Hanover  to  the  river  Niemen.  And  the  new  lands 
along  the  rivers  Netze  and  Vistula  were  capable  of  great 
improvement ;  for,  when  properly  drained  and  protected, 
the  soil  was  extremely  fertile. 


FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  IN  TIME  OF  PEACE  205 


This  division  of  parts  of  Poland  by  the  mere  right  of  The  Polish 
the  strongest  has  been  generally  cried  down  as  one  of  the  nobility, 
most  iniquitous  acts  in  history;  a  satiric  artist  of  the 
time  has  drawn  an  apt  picture  of  the  poor  Polish  king 
tearing  his  hair,  while  Frederick,  Catherine,  and  Joseph 
coldly  point  to  the  map  of  Europe,  which  they  are  cutting 
up  to  suit  themselves.  But  it  must  be  said,  on  the  other 
side,  that  if  ever  a  people  had  been  proved  incapable  of 
self-government  it  was  these  Poles.  Frederick  was  not 
exaggerating  when  he  declared,  on  his  first  visit  to  these 
parts,  that  Canada  was  in  a  better  state  of  cultivation,  and 
that  he  had  acquired  44  a  piece  of  anarchy.”  A  nation  of 
savages  could  not  have  acted  more  lawlessly  or  taken  less 
heed  to  their  own  advantage  than  did  the  Poles.  For 
more  than  a  century  the  cruelest  kind  of  civil  warfare  had 
been  the  order  of  the  day;  and  even  such  national  institu¬ 
tions  as  there  were,  could  at  any  moment  be  put  out  of  joint 
by  the  nie  pos  walam ,  or  liberum  veto,  of  a  single  noble  in  the 
Diet.  One-fourteenth  of  the  whole  population  belonged  to 
the  nobility,  for  all  children  inherited  the  title  alike ;  and 
it  was,  furthermore,  the  custom  to  create  new  nobles  en 
masse.  After  the  relief  of  Vienna,  in  1683,  John  Sobieski 
had  conferred  this  distinction  on  the  whole  of  his  cavalry. 

These  Szlachcicen,  as  they  were  called,  held  all  the  public 
offices,  and  ground  down  the  lower  classes — who  often  lived 
in  earth  huts  and  were  little  better  than  brutes.  The  busi¬ 
ness  of  ruling  was  ostensibly  performed  by  an  elected  king 
and  by  a  Diet  of  some  two  hundred  members ;  but,  year 
after  year,  there  were  bitter  conflicts  of  interest,  which 
not  infrequently  ended  in  the  formation,  all  over  Poland, 
of  confederations  for  mutual  aggression.  Incredible  as  it 
may  seem,  it  has  been  reckoned  that,  out  of  fifty-two  diets 
held  between  the  years  1652  and  1704,  no  less  than  forty- 
eight  broke  up  in  disorder.  At  the  Diet  of  1746,  one  party 


206 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Degeneracy 
of  the 
Poles. 


Stanislaus 

Poniatow- 

ski. 


refused  to  allow  the  signing  of  the  very  laws  it  had  just 
helped  to  pass,  and,  throughout  one  whole  evening  session, 
lasting  several  hours,  blew  out  the  candles  every  time  they 
were  brought  in. 

No  wonder  Jean  Jacques  Rousseau  could  say  of  the 
Polish  nation,  “  It  is  a  body  that  has  a  stroke  of  apoplexy 
every  time  it  moves.”  Even  the  loyal  primate,  Lubienski, 
—  in  summoning  to  the  election  of  1764,  — declares  that  the 
laws  are  disregarded,  that  commerce  has  ceased,  that  the 
boundaries  are  unprotected,  and  the  treasury  empty.  “  In 
all  history,”  says  his  proclamation,  “no  example  can  be 
found  of  such  disorders ;  ”  and  again,  “  A  kingdom  so  mis¬ 
erably  constituted  must  of  necessity  either  become  the 
prey  of  an  enemy  or  relapse  in  time  into  Tartar  steppes.” 
King  Stanislaus  Lesczinsky  had  once  written,  “  Our  turn 
will  surely  come,  and  we  shall  be  the  prey  of  a  great  con¬ 
queror  ;  perhaps  the  neighboring  poivers  may  decide  to  divide 
our  territory .”  It  is  evident  that,  whatever  fate  was  to 
strike  Poland,  her  condition  could  not  have  been  changed 
for  the  worse;  moreover,  if  an  excuse  is  needed  for  Fred¬ 
erick  the  Great,  it  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  Russia 
would  have  absorbed  the  whole  had  he  refused  to  take  his 
share,  and  that,  by  accepting  this  solution  of  a  difficult 
problem,  he  averted  a  general  European  war. 

The  Polish  question  had  just  become  important  at  the 
time  of  the  death  of  Augustus  III.,  in  1763.  Frederick, 
isolated,  and  estranged  from  all  the  other  great  powers, 
had  determined  to  cultivate  the  friendship  of  Catherine  II., 
and  aided  her  in  bringing  on  the  vacant  Polish  throne  her 
former  lover,  Stanislaus  Poniatowski.  To  him  it  was 
roundly  intimated  that  he  never  could  have  become  king 
by  his  own  efforts,  and  that  he  would  be  expected  to  show 
his  gratitude  by  subserviency  to  Russia.  The  utmost 
pressure  had,  indeed,  been  exercised  upon  the  electors: 


FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  IN  TIME  OF  PEACE  207 


the  Russians  had  camped  before  Warsaw  and  had  sent 
bands  of  Cossacks  at  intervals  to  parade  the  streets ;  the 
primate,  Lubienski,  had  been  bribed  by  the  gift  of  a  splen¬ 
did  piece  of  fur  worth  twenty-four  thousand  roubles  and 
by  the  promise  of  eighty  thousand  more  after  the  election. 
At  Catherine’s  request,  Frederick  had  sent  Prussian  troops 
to  Poland ;  and,  on  the  news  of  the  success  of  Poniatowski, 
he  congratulated  his  ally  in  the  most  glowing  terms.  44  God 
said,  Let  there  be  light,  and  there  was  light,”  he  wrote; 
“as  far  as  the  Ottoman  Porte  your  Majesty  forces  from  all 
a  recognition  of  the  excellency  of  your  system.  You 
speak,  madame,  and  the  world  is  silent  before  you.” 
Frederick  might  well  express  his  admiration  for  Catherine, 
inasmuch  as,  in  the  treaty  signed  with  himself  shortly 
before  the  election,  she  had  secured  all  the  advantage  for 
herself, — he  promising  to  interfere  in  Poland  for  the  sake 
of  purely  Russian  interests.  It  had  been  hinted,  indeed, 
even  then,  that  in  case  of  war  he  might  hope  for 
compensation. 

The  Poles  rushed  blindly  on  to  their  own  ruin.  This 
forcible  imposition  of  a  king  did  not  seem  to  greatly 
worry  them,  but  they  could  not  be  brought  to  keep  peace 
among  themselves.  The  main  body  of  the  people,  fanatic 
and  Jesuit-ridden  to  the  last  degree,  would  grant  no  con¬ 
cessions  whatever  to  the  so-called  dissidents,  — members 
of  the  orthodox  Russian  and  of  the  Lutheran  church.  Not 
only  might  they  hold  no  office,  but  they  might  not  even 
partake  of  their  own  communion  or  bury  the  bodies  of  their 
own  dead  without  first  receiving  permission  of  the  Catholic 
authorities.  Forbidden  to  build  new  churches,  or  even 
to  repair  the  old  ones,  their  schools,  too,  were  shut  up  and 
their  children  lured  into  Catholic  establishments ;  while, 
over  the  dying,  the  Jesuit  priests  hovered,  trying  to  make 
converts  at  the  last  moment. 


The  Polish 
noncon¬ 
formists. 


208 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Folly  and 
superstition 
of  the 
Poles. 


Here  was  a  matter  tliat  gave  Prussia  and  Russia  constant 
pretexts  for  interference ;  while  Austria,  becoming  alarmed 
for  the  very  existence  of  Poland,  began  to  assume  a  threat¬ 
ening  attitude  toward  these  two  powers.  By  a  new  treaty, 
in  1767,  Frederick  promised  Russia  that,  under  certain 
circumstances,  he  would  throw  an  army  into  Austrian  ter¬ 
ritory;  but,  in  such  a  case,  he  fully  intended  to  compen¬ 
sate  himself  at  the  cost  of  Poland. 

From  this  time  on,  Frederick’s  thoughts  were  constantly 
busy  with  the  project  of  acquiring  West  Prussia;  though 
the  actual  suggestion  seems  to  have  come  from  Russia, 
and  the  actual  impulse  did  certainly  come  from  Austria. 
The  affair  of  the  dissidents  involved  the  Czarina  in  a 
war,  not  only  with  the  Poles,  but  also  with  the  Turks  — 
whose  territory  had  been  inadvertently  violated  by  the 
seizure  of  Polish  refugees.  Moldau  and  Wallachia  were 
soon  in  Russian  hands ;  Austria,  greatly  alarmed,  made  ad¬ 
vances  to  Turkey  and  also  to  Prussia  —  an  interchange  of 
visits  taking  place  between  Frederick  and  Maria  Theresa’s 
son  and  coregent,  Joseph. 

The  Poles,  meanwhile,  acted  more  and  more  like  irre¬ 
sponsible  children.  In  1768,  they  had  made  concessions 
and  signed  agreements  which  they  later  refused  to  carry 
out.  They  were  perfectly  blinded  in  their  hatred  of  the 
Russians,  and,  in  the  face  of  the  tremendous  superiority  of 
the  latter,  pinned  their  faith  upon  the  supernatural ;  they 
believed  that  the  halos  from  the  heads  of  the  risen  dead 
would  blind  their  enemies,  and  that  the  Mother  of  God 
would  direct  the  bullets  of  a  people  that  had  chosen  her 
to  be  their  patron  saint.  It  was  seriously  reported  that 
Joseph  and  Mary,  together,  had  stocked  the  Cracow  arsenal 
with  much-needed  ammunition. 

A  Russian-Austrian  war  was  now  on  the  very  point  of 
breaking  out;  and  Austria,  in  1771,  signed  an  alliance 


FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  IN  TIME  OF  PEACE  209 

with  the  Turks.  Frederick  by  the  terms  of  his  treaty  was 
bound  to  aid  Russia.  But  Austria’s  occupation  of  the 
Polish  district  of  Zips — on  the  ground  of  an  old  mortgage 
which  she  meant  now  to  redeem — and  her  subsequent  seiz¬ 
ure  of  adjoining  territory,  brought  about  a  solution  of  the 
difficulties  which  was  unexpected  to  the  party  most  con¬ 
cerned.  Catherine’s  remark  to  Prince  Henry,  Frederick’s 
representative,  on  hearing  of  this  action,  was  a  seemingly 
innocent  question  as  to  why  others,  too,  should  not  do  the 
like.  The  result  was  a  race  for  gain  and  a  staking  out 
of  ever  increasing  claims,  which  culminated  in  the  famous 
Treaty  of  Partition  of  1772.  Of  all  the  contracting  par¬ 
ties,  Austria  seems  to  have  had  the  least  right  on  her  side; 
and,  had  it  rested  with  Maria  Theresa  alone,  the  transaction 
would  never  have  been  consummated.  But  Joseph  II.  was 
the  incarnation  of  greed,  and  Kaunitz  well  supported  him. 

The  poor  empress,  though  she  eventually  consented 
to  everything,  was  more  unhappy  than  ever  in  her  life 
before.  “I  have  but  a  very  poor  opinion  of  our  right,” 
she  declared.  And  indeed  Russia  and  Prussia  had  at  least 
the  excuse,  that  the  Polish  war  had  caused  them  heavy 
losses,  for  which  they  were  now  seeking  indemnity.  In 
February,  1771,  Maria  Theresa  wrote:  “When  claim  was 
laid  to  all  my  lands  I  buoyed  myself  up  with  my  good  right 
and  with  the  help  of  God ;  now,  when  not  only  is  the  right 
not  on  my  side,  but  obligations,  justice,  and  fairness  are 
against  me,  I  have  no  peace  left.”  She  could  not  bear, 
she  said,  the  reproaches  of  a  heart  unaccustomed  to  deceive 
itself  or  others.  When  the  Swedish  envoy,  Count  Barck, 
once  tried  to  comfort  her  by  declaring  that  she  was  account¬ 
able  for  her  actions  only  to  God:  “Yes,”  she  cried,  sol¬ 
emnly  raising  her  hands  to  heaven,  “  that  is  the  very  judge 
I  fear!” 

Yet,  all  this  time,  her  government  was  fairly  insatiable 


The  con¬ 
science  of 
Maria 
Theresa. 


VOL.  II — p 


210 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Austria’s 

greed. 


Despair  and 
levity  of 
the  Polish 
patriots. 


in  its  demands.  Frederick  the  Great,  who  complained 
bitterly  that  Austria  was  acquiring  so  much  more  terri¬ 
tory  than  himself,  remarked  of  Kaunitz  that  he  was  pretty 
well  imitating  the  greed  of  the  double  eagle  on  the  coat 
of  arms  of  his  court;  and,  in  talking  to  Zwieten,  the  Aus¬ 
trian  envoy,  he  suddenly  broke  out  with:  “ Potztaus end ! 
you  have  a  good  maw!  ” 

In  the  final  settlement  Austria’s  share  was,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  three  times  the  size  of  Prussia’s,  and  much  more 
fertile  and  populous;  although,  as  Kaunitz  pointed  out,  it 
was  less  favorably  situated,  being  separated  from  the  rest 
of  the  monarchy  by  the  Carpathians.  The  Russian  portion 
was  larger  still ;  but  contained  only  half  the  number  of 
inhabitants  and  consisted  mainly  of  woods,  marshes,  and 
barren  stretches  of  sand. 

Poland  herself  had  less  than  no  voice  in  this  whole 
matter  of  partition.  When  the  grand  chancellor,  Czarto- 
riski,  told  the  Russian  envoy  that,  in  the  forty  years  of  his 
administration,  he  had  never  dreamt  of  such  a  possibility, 
“Yes,”  was  the  insolent  answer,  “the  older  one  grows,  the 
more  one  learns !  ”  The  Diet  was  commanded,  in  the  most 
peremptory  manner,  to  assemble  —  to  begin  deliberations 
on  the  19th  of  April  and  to  end  them  on  the  7th  of  June. 
The  annexed  districts  were  allowed  no  representation, 
while  many  other  provinces,  in  despair,  refused  to  send 
delegates  at  all.  Those  who  did  come  together  to  this 
most  maimed  of  assemblies,  were  obliged  to  sign  allegiance 
to  a  “confederation”  before  being  allowed  admittance  to 
the  hall ;  it  was  made  generally  known  that  the  least 
opposition  would  cause  the  allies  to  increase  their  de¬ 
mands;  while  Prussian  and  Russian  soldiers  were  drawn 
up  in  rank  and  file,  ready  to  be  quartered  on  the  recalci¬ 
trant.  The  Bishop  of  Luck  but  narrowly  escaped  being 
made  to  share  his  sleeping  apartment  with  twelve  hussars. 


FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  IN  TIME  OF  PEACE  211 


The  poor  king  of  Poland  was  in  the  depths  of  despair. 
“I  am  completely  in  the  hands  of  the  three  courts,”  he 
wrote  to  a  lady  in  Paris.  “I  am  dying  of  hunger;  they 
have  attacked  all  that  I  hold  most  dear.”  He  cursed  the 
day  that  had  brought  him  to  this  unhappy  spot,  which  he 
nevertheless  was  debarred  from  leaving.  The  treaty  was 
ratified  in  September,  1TT2,  after  Frederick  and  Joseph 
had  made  unworthy  attempts  still  further  to  increase  their 
holdings.  The  Polish  delegates  signed  with  actual  tears 
and  wailings ;  before  he  could  be  prevented,  one  of  them  had 
written  the  word  “farewell”  opposite  to  his  name.  Yet 
the  childishness  of  these  patriots  was  simply  unconquer¬ 
able.  The  papal  nuncio  is  authority  for  the  statement  that 
frivolity,  conuption,  and  unbridled  extravagance  were 
displayed  as  never  before.  On  the  night  before  handing 
in  the  formal  renunciation  of  thousands  of  square  miles 
of  their  territory,  many  took  part  in  a  great  festivity  at  the 
Bruhl  palace.  Fireworks  were  set  off  and  King  Stanislaus 
Augustus  Poniatowski  himself  opened  the  ball  with  the 
Princess  Sapieha! 

For  Frederick,  the  acquisition  of  West  Prussia  was  the 
incentive  to  unprecedented  efforts  in  the  way  of  reclaiming 
waste  lands  and  of  regenerating  a  fallen  people.  His  first 
visit  to  his  new  territory  had  not  disappointed  him.  “  It 
is  a  very  good  and  very  advantageous  possession,”  he 
wrote  to  his  brother  Henry;  “but  in  order  that  fewer  per¬ 
sons  may  be  envious,  I  say  to  every  one  who  will  listen, 
that  I  have  seen  nothing  but  sand,  pines,  moorland,  and 
Jews.”  On  September  27,  1772,  the  estates  did  him 
homage  in  the  great  hall  of  the  ruined  Marienburg;  they 
were  feasted  at  his  expense,  and  gold  and  silver  medals 
were  distributed  among  them ;  while  coins  to  the  amount 
of  2000  thalers  were  flung  to  the  people.  From  now  on,  he 
exchanged  the  old  title  of  “king  in  Prussia  ”  for  the  fuller 


Frederick’s 
reforms 
in  West 
Prussia. 


212 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The 

Bavarian 

succession 

war. 


“king  of  Prussia”;  and  ceased  to  complain  that  his  king¬ 
dom  was  an  anomaly,  belonging  neither  to  the  small  nor  to 
the  great  powers.  He  drew  colonists  by  the  thousands  into 
poorly  settled  districts ;  spurred  the  farmers  on  by  setting 
prizes  on  the  best  results  of  agriculture ;  founded  public 
schools,  and  did  away  with  the  superabundant  Catholic 
holidays  that  had  done  so  much  to  encourage  idleness.  The 
whole  apparatus  of  a  well-ordered  administration  was  in¬ 
troduced:  military  divisions,  judicial  courts,  rapid  postal 
communication,  commercial  regulations.  The  Bromberg 
Canal  between  the  Netze  and  the  Brahe,  constructed  at  a 
cost  of  740,000  thalers,  opened  up  a  direct  path  of  trade 
to  the  Elbe  and  to  the  Oder.  The  revenues  from  the  new 
province  soon  rose  to  5,000,000  thalers;  besides  which, 
25,000  men  were  added  yearly  to  the  Prussian  army. 

The  military  establishment  went  on  increasing  until 
the  day  of  Frederick’s  death,  and,  at  the  last,  numbered 
nearly  200,000  in  all  —  an  enormous  total  for  a  state  with 
a  population  of  but  little  over  5,000,000.  One  small  dis¬ 
astrous  war  came  to  mar  the  end  of  a  glorious  reign  —  a 
war,  as  usual,  with  Austria,  and  one  in  which,  although  no 
battle  was  fought  and  no  siege  undertaken,  some  20,000 
Prussian  soldiers  succumbed  to  sickness  and  the  treasury 
was  depleted  by  17,000,000  thalers.  This  Bavarian  suc¬ 
cession  war  is  one  that  historians  delight  to  ridicule,  and 
that  contemporaries  nicknamed  the  “potato  war,”  because 
the  chief  occupation  of  the  troops  was  hunting  for  food  in 
the  fields.  Frederick’s  military  reputation  suffered,  too, 
inasmuch  as  he  failed  to  accomplish  what  he  attempted, 
and  showed,  in  general,  the  effects  of  old  age  and  of  a 
broken  constitution.  Yet  if  Austria  was  to  be  prevented 
from  holding  the  leadership  of  Germany,  the  war  was 
necessary  and,  indeed,  unavoidable.  With  the  Emperor 
Joseph  II.,  the  acquisition  of  new  lands  had  come  to  be  an 


FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  IN  TIME  OF  PEACE  213 


inveterate  passion;  he  had  taken  all  that  he  could  pos¬ 
sibly  lay  hands  on  in  Poland;  he  had  wrested  the  province 
of  Bukovina  from  Turkey;  and  now  he  was  lusting  for  the 
whole  of  Bavaria.  One  is  tempted  to  think  that  he  had 
learned  his  lesson  from  Frederick  the  Great;  for  his 
methods  were  very  similar.  Old  claims  to  Bavaria,  dat¬ 
ing  back  to  1426,  were  raked  out ;  and,  before  they  could 
be  acknowledged,  armies  were  sent  to  enforce  them.  It 
mattered  little  that  the  claims  were  baseless,  and  that  the 
very  emperor,  Sigismund,  who  had  made  the  grants  in 
question,  had  reversed  them  in  1429,  with  the  consent  of 
the  parties  concerned. 

The  family  of  Wittelsbach,  divided  into  three  lines, 
held  at  this  time  Bavaria,  the  Palatinate,  and  the  Duchy 
of  Pfalz-Zweibriicken.  The  Elector  Maximilian  Joseph, 
however,  and  the  Count  Palatine  Charles  Theodore  were 
both  childless  and  together  had  signed  an  instrument  —  the 
names  only  being  left  blank  —  by  which,  when  one  died,  the 
other  was  immediately  to  be  proclaimed  heir  to  his  lands. 
United,  this  would  make  a  territory  nearly  equalling 
Prussia  as  it  had  been  at  the  time  of  the  accession  of 
Frederick  the  Great;  and  Emperor  Joseph  had  once  said 
of  Charles  Theodore,  “  God  grant  that  he  do  not  also  in¬ 
herit  the  mind  of  a  Frederick,  for  to  him  alone  will  he  be 
second  in  power  and  possessions  in  Germany.” 

The  sequel  showed  that  on  this  point  at  least  there  was 
no  ground  for  fear.  On  the  death  of  Maximilian  Joseph, 
in  1777,  Charles  Theodore,  far  from  displaying  the  mind 
of  a  Frederick,  proved  as  clay  in  the  hands  of  Austria. 
Only  let  him  have  peace  and  quiet,  and  comfortable  pos¬ 
session  of  what  was  left,  and  he  was  willing  to  sign  away 
almost  any  part  of  his  inheritance.  He  was  afraid,  indeed, 
to  show  the  agreement  with  Austria  to  his  heir,  Charles 
of  Zweibriicken,  and  tried  to  obtain  the  latter’s  signature 


Austria 
lusting  for 
Wittels- 
bach  lands. 


214 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Prussia  and 
Russia  cry- 
halt  to 
Austria. 


without  having  him  read  the  document;  Austrian  troops 
in  the  meantime  had  taken  possession  of  Lower  Bavaria 
and  the  Upper  Palatinate,  and  were  encroaching  in  all 
directions.  It  was  at  this  juncture  that  Frederick  the 
Great  awoke  to  a  sense  of  what  a  preponderance  in  Ger¬ 
many  success  would  give  to  Austria.  Moreover,  in  thus 
trying  to  absorb  an  electorate,  Joseph  II.  was  acting  con¬ 
trary  to  the  Golden  Bull,  to  the  Westphalian  Peace,  and 
to  his  own  electoral  concessions.  Yet  it  seemed  to  Fred¬ 
erick  that  the  impulse  should  come  from  the  injured  par¬ 
ties,  and  he  tried  to  galvanize  the  person  most  concerned, 
Charles  Theodore,  into  a  posture  of  resistance.  Failing 
in  this  endeavor,  he  sought  to  prop  up  Charles  of  Zwei- 
briicken,  who  needed  much  encouragement.  The  only 
manly  member  of  the  family  was  the  Princess  Maria  Anna, 
a  sister  of  the  dead  Maximilian  Joseph,  who  of  her  own 
accord  appealed  to  the  Prussian  king.  “Ah,  why  were 
not  you  elector?”  Frederick  wrote  to  her;  and  together 
they  did  finally  induce  Duke  Charles  to  send  a  formal 
appeal  for  aid  to  Prussia  and  to  France,  and,  in  March, 
1778,  to  bring  the  matter  before  the  Diet  at  Ratisbon. 

Frederick  was  now  in  a  position  of  great  strength.  For 
the  first  time  Prussia  headed  a  movement  for  the  protec¬ 
tion  of  a  minor  German  state  against  Austrian  aggression : 
the  emperor  was  to  learn  that  he  could  not  rule  like  a 
Turkish  sultan  and  break  all  privileges  and  compacts. 
Saxony,  too,  had  well-grounded  claims  to  a  small  part 
of  the  Bavarian  inheritance,  the  Saxon  electress  having 
been  a  sister  of  Maximilian  Joseph.  It  was  likely  that 
Catherine  of  Russia,  being  Frederick’s  ally,  would  inter¬ 
fere  in  his  behalf;  while  Maria  Theresa,  grown  old  and 
timid,  was  openly  out  of  sympathy  with  her  ambitious  son, 
whom  she  warned  against  irritating  Frederick  —  for,  from 
this  “monster,”  the  worst  was  to  be  expected.  The  armies 


FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  IN  TIME  OF  PEACE  215 


had  been  in  the  field  some  months  when,  without  consult¬ 
ing  Joseph,  she  sent  Baron  Thugut  to  the  “monster  ”  with 
overtures  of  peace ;  this  led  to  long  negotiations,  during 
which  military  operations  were  carried  on  without  spirit,  — 
the  hardships  of  the  approaching  winter  compelling  Fred¬ 
erick  at  last  to  beat  an  inglorious  retreat  into  Silesia. 

A  word  from  Catherine  of  Russia  proved  more  decisive 
than  arguments  or  manoeuvres  in  other  directions.  In  the 
spring  of  17^9,  she  declared  that  she  considered  Austria’s 
claims  groundless,  and  that,  should  the  emperor  persist  in 
his  designs,  she  would  feel  compelled  to  fulfil  the  terms 
of  her  alliance  with  Prussia.  Unable  to  resist  such  a  com¬ 
bination  as  this,  the  emperor  consented  to  the  calling  of  a 
congress  at  Teschen,  where  peace  was  finally  signed  on  the 
13th  of  May,  1779.  A  miserable  war  and  a  miserable 
peace  !  Whereas  Frederick  had  fought  for  the  principle 
that  Austria  had  no  right  to  an  inch  of  Bavarian  territory, 
he  was  obliged  to  consent  to  the  cession  of  the  rich  dis¬ 
trict,  between  the  Inn,  the  Danube,  and  the  Salzach,  con¬ 
taining  some  sixty  thousand  inhabitants.  His  own  reward 
was  nominal:  the  right  to  incorporate  Ansbach  and  Bai- 
reuth  as  a  part  of  Prussian  territory  —  a  right  which  had 
never  been  seriously  disputed.  To  accomplish  this  small 
result,  he  had  submitted  to  the  calling  in  of  Russia  in  a 
purely  German  question  —  a  precedent  for  the  future  of 
which  that  power  was  often  to  take  advantage. 

The  future  proved  that  a  simple  treaty  of  peace  was  not 
sufficient  to  bar  the  progress  of  the  “  Caesar  possessed  by  de¬ 
mons,” — as  Frederick  affectionately  denominated  Joseph. 
No  emperor  since  Charles  V.  had  shown  such  activity  both 
for  good  and  for  bad.  In  his  own  Austrian  lands  Joseph 
established  religious  toleration,  abolished  all  the  harder 
features  of  serfdom,  took  away  all  inquisitorial  power  from 
his  criminal  courts,  dropped  from  the  code  such  crimes  as 


Joseph 
II. ’s  am¬ 
bitious 
plans. 


216 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


magic,  apostasy,  and  marriage  with  infidels,  and  intro¬ 
duced  compulsory  education.  But,  in  tfie  empire  at  large, 
he  encroached  more  and  more  on  the  liberties  and  on  the 
possessions  of  the  estates,  proving  himself,  by  his  methods, 
a  political  Ignatius  Loyola,  — with  spies  everywhere  and 
with  complete  carelessness  as  to  the  means  by  which  his 
good  ends  were  to  be  accomplished.  The  Westphalian 
bishoprics  were  his  first  object  of  attack.  His  brother 
Maximilian  was  elected  coadjutor  of  Cologne  and  Miins- 
ter,  and,  like  that  Ernest  of  Bavaria  of  Reformation  times, 
sought  to  bring  adjacent  sees  into  his  own  hands.  From 
the  Catholic  clergy  in  general  an  attempt  was  made  to  raise 
obsolete  revenues ;  the  Austrian  police  interfered  beyond 
their  own  boundaries;  claims  were  laid  to  Wiirtemberg 
and  an  exchange  proposed  with  Baden. 

The  league  Most  serious  of  all,  was  a  new  attempt  to  gain  Bavaria, 
of  princes,  made  in  1784,  this  time  not  by  war  or  by  encroachment, 
but  by  diplomacy.  Charles  Theodore  was  invited  to  re¬ 
nounce  his  electorate,  in  return  for  the  Austrian  Nether¬ 
lands  and  the  title  of  king  of  Burgundy.  To  Austria,  this 
meant  the  control  of  all  South  Germany  and  the  absorp¬ 
tion  of  an  important  electoral  vote.  And  Charles  Theo¬ 
dore  was  not  unwilling  to  make  the  exchange,  although 
the  Duke  of  Zweibriicken  declared  that  he  preferred  to  be 
buried  under  the  ruins  of  Bavaria.  This  answer,  said 
Joseph,  “smacked  chiefly  of  Potsdam,”  nor  was  he  far 
wrong.  Frederick  by  this  time  had  completed  a  long 
projected  Fiirstenbund,  or  close  association  of  princes,  for 
mutual  protection.  The  confederates  were  to  act  as  a  unit 
at  the  diets,  to  strive  for  a  reform  of  the  imperial  Chamber 
Court,  to  guarantee  to  each  other  the  safety  and  inviola¬ 
bility  of  their  territories.  As  there  were  three  electors, 
Hanover,  Saxony,  and  Brandenburg,  in  the  league,  and 
as  all  agreed  to  act  in  unison  at  a  future  election,  an  enor- 


FREDERICK  THE  GREAT  IN  TIME  OF  PEACE  217 


mous  pressure  could  be  brought  to  bear  upon  the  Haps- 
burgs. 

This  first  confederation  of  German  states,  under  the 
leadership  of  Prussia,  was  temporary  in  character  and 
looked  to  the  attainment  of  a  single  object  —  the  frustra¬ 
tion  of  the  Austrian  designs  on  Bavaria.  This  object  it 
achieved,  but  it  played  no  further  r61e.  Yet  the  Fiirsten- 
bund  has  its  great  importance  as  the  presage  of  what  was 
to  come ;  and,  also,  for  two  other  reasons :  for  the  first  time 
Germans  tried  to  settle  their  own  affairs  without  calling 
in  foreign  aid,  and,  for  the  first  time,  in  the  composition 
of  such  a  league,  religious  differences  played  absolutely 
no  part.  “It  is  time  to  get  out  of  the  old  rut,”  a  warm 
defender  of  the  project  had  written ;  “  be  you  Catholic  or 
Protestant,  you  are  a  free  German  man  whose  forefathers 
would  rather  have  died  than  serve !  ” 

The  Fiirstenbund  was  the  last  political  achievement  of 
Frederick  the  Great;  the  time  had  come  for  him  to  throw 
off  what  he  himself  called  “the  worn-out  cover  of  his 
soul.”  His  last  years  seem  to  have  been  miserably 
unhappy :  all  his  pleasures  and  resources  had  come  to  an 
end,  and  the  loss  of  his  front  teeth  prevented  him  even 
from  playing  the  flute ;  while  oppressive  taxation  had  cost 
him  much  of  his  popularity.  “Old  sour-mug”  was  the 
nickname  given  him  even  in  his  own  family.  For  the 
person  of  his  heir, — his  nephew,  Frederick  William, — 
he  had  neither  love  nor  respect;  he  doubtless  felt  a  pre¬ 
sentiment  of  the  coming  wreck  and  ruin  of  his  country. 
The  “wonderful  man  of  war,”  as  Pitt  once  called  him, 
had  become  a  sad  misanthrope.  “I  am  tired  of  ruling 
over  slaves !  ”  he  once  said ;  and  he  interrupted  a  peda¬ 
gogue,  Sulzer,  who  was  telling  him  didactically  that 
man  inclined  rather  to  the  good  than  to  the  bad,  with: 
“Inclines  more  to  the  good?  Ah,  dear  Sulzer,  you  don’t 
know  this  damned  race  as  I  do!  ” 


Death  of 
Frederick 
the  Great. 


218 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMAN 


More  and  more  he  withdrew  into  himsel  >rking  the 
more  feverishly  the  nearer  he  saw  his  end  approaching. 
Though  racked  with  pain  he  continued  to  receive  his 
councillors  at  four  o’clock  in  the  morning.  When,  indeed, 
he  appeared  at  parade,  everything  else  was  forgotten  but 
the  former  military  glory,  and  wave  after  wave  of  applause 
was  wont  to  greet  the  old  hero.  It  was  a  rare  occasion 
like  this  that  hastened  his  death ;  six  hours  in  the  saddle, 
with  no  protection  from  the  rain,  proved  too  much  for  the 
broken  septuagenarian.  On  the  17th  of  August,  1786, 
he  passed  away  in  his  arm-chair,  at  Sans  Souci,  and  a  new 
era  broke  over  the  Prussian  state. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION,  THE  DISRUPTION  OF  GER¬ 
MANY,  AND  THE  DOWNFALL  OF  PRUSSIA 

Literature  :  In  addition  to  the  general  histories  of  Prussia  we  have 
Treitscbke’s  Deutsche  Geschichte  im  XIX  Jahrhundert ,  the  most  brill¬ 
iantly  written  history  in  the  German  language.  It  does  not  altogether 
supersede  Hausser,  Deutsche  Geschichte ,  1786-1815.  Fyffe’s  Modern 
Europe  is  based  largely  on  the  latter  work  for  this  period.  Boyen’s  Erin- 
nerungen  is  a  contemporary  source  of  high  value.  We  have  also  a  number 
of  splendid  biographies  which  partly  fall  into  this  period  :  Seeley’s  Stein, 
Droysen’s  York ,  Delbriick’s  Gneisenau ,  Lehmann’s  Scharnhorst.  The 
Countess  Voss,  mistress  of  ceremonies  of  Queen  Louise,  has  left  famous 
memoirs  which,  however,  display  a  certain  aridity  of  mind.  Nettlebeck’s 
Lebensbeschreibung  is  very  interesting.  Fournier’s  Napoleon  is  good. 

At  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  there  were  in 
Germany  no  less  than  three  hundred  independent  sover¬ 
eignties,  ecclesiastical  states,  or  free  cities ;  not  to  speak 
of  fifteen  hundred  imperial  knights  with  jurisdiction  over 
their  subjects.  The  territory  of  modern  Wiirtemberg 
alone,  was  divided  among  seventy-eight  different  rulers, 
under  the  almost  nominal  headship  of  the  emperor.  Some 
of  these  principalities  were  infinitesimally  small,  even 
when  compared  with  domains  like  those  of  a  modern 
prince  of  Waldeck,  which  one  can  traverse  in  the  course 
of  a  morning’s  stroll.  The  abbess  of  Gutenzell  was  down 
in  the  Heichsmatrikel ,  or  military  schedule  of  the  empire, 
for  one-third  of  a  horseman  and  three  and  one-third  foot 
soldiers ;  the  barony  of  Sickingen  for  two-thirds  of  a  horse¬ 
man  and  five  and  one-third  foot.  The  burgravate  of 
Reineck  could  boast  of  one  castle,  twelve  poor  subjects, 

one  Jew,  and  a  couple  of  farms  and  millwheels. 

219 


Germany  a 
conglom¬ 
eration  of 
small  prin¬ 
cipalities. 


220 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The 

bishoprics 
and  ab¬ 
bacies. 


The  free 
counts  of 
the  empire. 


The  rulers  of  these  petty  states  wasted  little  thought  on 
problems  of  good  government.  The  bishoprics  and  ab¬ 
bacies,  not  being  hereditary,  were  subject  to  a  total  change 
in  the  methods  of  administration  with  every  change  of 
incumbent;  there  was  no  temptation  to  introduce  far- 
reaching  reforms,  to  further  industry,  to  secure  colonists. 
If  by  chance,  as  occasionally  happened,  one  of  these  princi¬ 
palities  came  into  the  hands  of  a  really  progressive  man, 
his  work  was  almost  invariably  undone  by  his  successor. 
The  great  majority  of  the  bishops  settled  down  to  the  en¬ 
joyment  of  the  moment,  and  their  lands  became  the  para¬ 
dise  of  idlers;  of  the  population  of  Mainz  one-quarter 
were  priests  or  beggars.  The  bishops  themselves  were  as 
worldly  as  any  secular  princes,  and  spent,  in  drinking, 
most  of  their  time,  and  a  good  part  of  their  revenues. 
During  a  week  that  he  spent  at  the  court  of  Wurzburg, 
Pollnitz,  the  memoirist,  declares  that  he  never  once  left 
the  table  in  a  conscious  condition ;  yet  he  innocently  gives 
the  palm  in  these  matters,  not  to  Wurzburg,  but  to  Fulda. 
A  whole  string  of  these  bishoprics,  —  Mainz,  Cologne, 
Treves,  Worms,  Spires,  and  others,  — extended  along  the 
Rhine,  forming  the  boundary  against  France:  a  weak 
bulwark  they  were  now  to  form  when  the  waves  of  the 
French  Revolution  came  surging  into  Germany. 

As  to  the  free  counts  of  the  empire,  who  were  also  par¬ 
ticularly  numerous  on  the  Rhine  and  in  Westphalia,  it 
would  seem  as  if  no  effort  of  satire  or  caricature  could 
approach  the  sober  reality.  Never  in  all  history  have 
pretensions  so  vast  been  coupled  with  territories  so  small. 
Dozens  of  states  were  able  to  boast  of  not  more  than  seven 
or  eight  square  miles  apiece,  yet  their  rulers  invariably 
spoke  of  themselves  as  “we,  so  and  so,  hy  the  grace  of 
God”;  and  the  number  of  “excellencies,”  of  ministers,  of 
marshals,  of  privy  councillors,  of  real  privy  councillors, 


THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION  221 

and  of  chamberlains,  would  seem  almost  to  outnumber  the 
male  population,  did  we  not  know  that  many  of  these 
pompous  offices  could  be  held  by  one  and  the  same  man. 
To  hide  the  paucity  of  subjects  heroic  efforts  were  often 
made:  in  one  principality  we  find  a  law  reducing  the 
salary  of  any  chancery  official  who  does  not  appear  at  the 
carnival  with  his  wife  and  grown-up  daughters ;  in  another, 
we  learn  that  the  prince  provided  three  uniforms  for  his 
guards,  so  that  at  different  times  of  the  day  they  might 
appear  as  cuirassiers,  as  grenadiers,  or  as  Uhlans. 

There  is  a  darker  side,  too,  to  the  goings-on  of  these 
proud  but  impecunious  lords,  whose  finances  were  often 
in  such  condition  that  a  chief  source  of  revenue  was  the 
lottery.  Their  subjects  were  treated  like  abject  slaves  and 
money  wrung  from  them  under  every  possible  pretext. 
The  great  jurist,  Moser,  who  has  left  us  the  best  contem¬ 
porary  picture  of  constitutional  matters,  speaks  of  the  code 
of  laws  of  one  principality  as  a  “  text-book  of  Christian 
sultanism.”  Resort  was  had  to  the  pettiest  oppressions, 
as  when,  in  Wittgenstein,  each  house-owner  was  obliged 
to  catch  twenty  sparrows  a  year  and  to  pay  a  forfeit  for 
every  one  short  of  that  number.  The  prince  of  Anhalt- 
Zerbst  made  it  a  penal  offence  for  any  of  his  subjects 
to  annoy  him  with  complaints.  There  seems  to  have 
been  no  depth,  even  of  crime,  to  which  these  free  counts 
would  not  descend.  In  extreme  cases  the  emperor’s  court 
mustered  up  energy  to  interfere;  and  we  hear,  among 
others,  of  a  Count  of  Leiningen  who  was  arrested  and 
deposed  on  a  charge  of  “horrible  sacrilege,  attempted 
murder,  poisoning,  bigamy,  high  treason,  oppression  of 
his  subjects,  unpardonable  ‘mishandling  of  strangers  and, 
also,  of  clerical  personages.”  A  Count  of  Wolfegg  was 
banished  for  “deceptions  practised  against  widows  and 
orphans.” 


222 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Free 

knights  and 
free  cities. 


The  im¬ 
perial  Diet. 


The  free  knights  of  the  empire,  —  descendants  of  the 
Ulrich  von  Huttens,  Franz  von  Sickingens,  and  Gotz  von 
Berlichingens  of  Reformation  times, — differed  from  the  free 
counts  in  not  having  a  seat  in  the  Diet,  and  in  not  being 
obliged  to  aid  the  empire  save  with  their  own  good  swords. 
The  emperors  were  usually  their  friends,  and  Ferdinand 
III.  had  caused  to  be  inserted  in  the  Westphalian  Peace 
an  acknowledgment  of  their  freedom  from  other  jurisdic¬ 
tion  than  his  own,  besides  other  privileges  that  made  them 
hated  and  envied  by  the  counts.  On  the  other  hand,  their 
voluntary  subsidies  were  the  largest  single  item  of  the 
emperor’s  scanty  revenues.  Their  character,  as  a  whole, 
was  bad;  and  we  have  remarkable  compacts,  entered  into 
by  whole  bodies  of  them,  for  the  observance  of  the  most 
elementary  laws  of  good  conduct,  such,  for  instance,  as 
the  non-committing  of  forgery!  By  the  more  advanced 
estates  of  the  empire  they  were  hated  for  their  unprogres- 
siveness,  being  only  outdone  in  that  respect  by  the  de¬ 
generate  free  imperial  cities.  These  latter,  of  which  there 
were  still  some  fifty,  had  been  on  the  downward  path  ever 
since  the  fifteenth  century;  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
they  entered  a  protest  against  the  broader  postal  system 
that  the  larger  states  were  trying  to  introduce,  on  the 
ground  that  their  local  messengers  would  lose  their  em¬ 
ployment!  It  may  be  said  here,  with  regard  to  all  these 
little  anachronisms  in  the  way  of  ecclesiastical  and  lay 
sovereignties,  that,  even  before  the  French  Revolution 
and  the  power  of  Napoleon  gave  the  final  impetus,  the 
idea  of  secularization  and  annexation  had  long  been  in 
the  air.  When  that  time  did  come,  there  was  very  little 
sympathy  for  them  in  any  part  of  Germany. 

The  only  institutions  reflecting  what  still  remained  of 
the  unity  of  the  empire  were  the  Reichstag ,  or  Diet,  the 
imperial  Rammer gericlit,  or  Chamber  Court,  and  the  em- 


THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 


223 


peror’s  own  Austrian  court,  the  Reichshofrath ,  at  Vienna. 
The  first  of  these,  the  Diet,  had  its  headquarters  at  Ratis- 
bon  and  formed,  since  1666,  a  permanent  or  perpetual 
body.  Moser  thinks  it  fortunate  in  having  sat  so  long,  as 
a  new  one  could  never  have  been  brought  together.  Vastly 
it  differed,  indeed,  from  those  famous  old  assemblies  of 
Hohenstaufen  or  of  Reformation  times,  when  the  emperor 
and  hi£  princes  rode  in  with  such  retinues  that  the  walls 
could  not  contain  them.  So  low  had  the  prestige  of  the 
empire  now  fallen  that  its  chief  business  was  in  the  hands 
of  half-paid  underlings ;  scarcely  one  of  the  states  had  an 
envoy  entirely  its  own,  but  rather  banded  together  with 
eight  or  nine  others  to  save  expense  and  trouble.  There 
were  years  when  all  three  colleges  combined  —  the  elec¬ 
tors,  the  princes,  and  the  free  cities  —  could  boast  of  but 
twenty-nine  delegates  among  them.  Even  then  the 
machinery  of  government  was  uncommonly  slow  and 
unwieldy ;  each  imperial  proposition  had  first  to  be  agreed 
to  in  each  of  the  three  colleges,  which  then  negotiated  one 
with  the  other;  while  in  default  of  unanimity  no  conclu¬ 
sion  was  arrived  at  at  all.  This  frequently  happened,  for 
the  interests  represented  were  often  European  rather  than 
German.  The  envoy  from  Hanover  voted  in  the  interests 
of  England;  Brandenburg  signified  Prussia;  Saxony, 
Poland;  Austria,  Hungary  and  Flanders ;  Alsace,  France; 
and  Oldenburg,  Russia. 

But  what  most  hindered  the  progress  of  affairs  at  Ratis- 
bon  and  what  made  the  assembly  the  laughing-stock  of 
Europe  was  the  extreme  sensitiveness  with  regard  to  eti¬ 
quette  and  precedence.  Once  or  twice  such  matters  almost 
led  to  war  between  small  states,  and  an  incident  with  regard 
to  the  taking  in  to  dinner  of  the  wife  of  the  Austrian  envoy 
was  not  settled  until  after  ten  formal  writings  had  been 
drawn  up  and  published.  If  this  same  Austrian  commis' 


Attention 
to  etiquette. 


224 


A  SHOUT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


> 


The  im¬ 
perial 
Chamber 
Court. 


sioner  was  to  be  visited  by  the  envoy  of  an  elector,  it 
was  immutably  prescribed  just  what  courtesies  should  be 
rendered,  and  just  how  far  the  legs  of  the  electoral  repre¬ 
sentative’s  chair  should  be  placed  on  the  red  carpet  where 
sat  the  emperor’s  agent.  The  envoys  of  the  ordinary 
princes  had  advanced  a  claim  that  the  front  legs  of  their 
chairs  should  at  least  be  allowed  to  rest  upon  the  fringe. 
Once,  when,  after  a  dispute  as  to  who  should  sit  on  green 
and  who  on  the  more  august  red  chairs,  it  had  been  decided 
that  all  should  sit  alike  on  green,  one  of  the  electoral 
members  brought  in  a  red  cloak  and  placed  it  so  as  to  cover 
the  whole  seat,  —  considering  that  thus,  as  he  wrote  to 
his  home  government,  he  had  vindicated  the  honor  of  his 
master !  It  was  the  same  with  regard  to  eating  off  gold 
or  silver  plate,  and  particularly  with  regard  to  the  liveries 
of  the  servants. 

With  the  imperial  Chamber  Court  matters  were  worse  if 
possible  than  with  the  Diet ;  from  the  beginning,  in  1495, 
the  emperors  had  looked  upon  this  institution  as  a  curtail¬ 
ment  of  their  own  prerogative  and  had  drawn  all  the  cases 
they  could  before  their  own  Austrian  court,  the  Reichshof- 
rath ,  of  which  the  members  were  imperial  satellites.  Long 
without  a  fixed  abode,  the  Chamber  Court  had,  in  1576, 
settled  at  Spires,  whence,  in  1689,  it  had  fled  from  the 
armies  of  Louis  XIV.  It  was  four  years  more  before  it 
could  find  a  town  to  harbor  it;  and,  when  insignificant 
Wetzlar  at  last  opened  its  gates,  it  remained  there  con¬ 
tentedly  to  the  end  of  its  existence,  although  for  more 
than  fifty  years  there  was  no  building  large  enough  to 
hold  its  records,  which  were  stored  in  other  towns.  If 
the  members  of  the  Diet  quarrelled  about  precedence  and 
etiquette,  still  more  did  this  highest  court  in  the  land 
wrangle  over  form  and  procedure :  a  quarrel  begun  in 
1704  hampered  the  transaction  of  business  for  se^  i 


THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 


225 


years,  while  another,  fifty  years  later,  caused  a  suspen¬ 
sion  o  f  all  activities.  The  want  of  a  fixed  income  was 
so  serious  that,  out  of  the  fifty  judges  originally  con¬ 
templated,  but  seventeen  could  be  employed ;  and  the  pro¬ 
posal  was  made  to  raise  revenues  by  lottery.  The  number 
of  uns  ettled  cases  was  very  great :  Goethe,  who  was  em¬ 
ployed  in  his  youth  at  this  court,  speaks  of  twenty  thou¬ 
sand  and  declares  that  they  are  yearly  increasing  at  the 
ratio  of  two  to  one.  No  wonder,  when  we  hear  that  a 
single  suit  had  been  going  on  for  188  years,  and  that,  in 
another,  684  witnesses  had  been  heard,  whose  testimony 
filled  no  less  than  10,864  pages !  The  Emperor  Joseph 
II.  had  tried  to  cope  with  these  magnificent  arrears  of 
injustice  and  had  established  a  revisory  committee ;  but, 
after  nine  years  of  labor,  the  members  had  gone  apart  in 
despair,  and,  we  are  told,  “  with  mutual  bitterness.” 

The  old  empire  of  Charlemagne,  of  Otto  the  Great,  and 
of  Frederick  Barbarossa  was  paralyzed  to  its  very  marrow, 
and  the  best  minds  of  the  age  had  no  sympathy  or  loyalty 
left  for  it.  “  I  have  no  conception,”  writes  Lessing,  “  of  the 
love  of  fatherland,  and  it  seems  to  me  at  best  a  heroic 
weakness  which  I  can  very  well  do  without.”  Goethe 
was  made  happier  by  an  interview  with  Napoleon  than 
by  any  victories  of  German  arms.  The  most  real  patriot 
of  the  day  was  Baron  Stein,  the  last  and  best  of  the  imperial 
knights ;  but  even  his  loyalty  was  not  to  a  present  but  to 
a  future  Germany,  that  he  himself  was  to  help  to  build. 

Over  against  all  this  disruption  there  might,  at  any  time 
up  to  the  death  of  Frederick  the  Great,  have  been  placed 
the  power  of  the  Prussian  state.  Here  at  least  it  seemed 
as  if  a  great  integral  part  of  the  empire  had  been  built  up 
upon  a  rock  of  bronze.  How  else  could  a  Prussian  king- 
have  so  long  held  at  bay  the  rest  of  Germany  and  the 
whole  of  northern  Europe?  And  when  Frederick  founded 


No 

patriotism 
among  the 
Germans. 


Decline  of 
Prussia. 


VOL.  II — Q 


226 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Frederick 
William  II. 
and  the 
Rosicru- 


liis  Fiirstenbund,  it  seemed  as  though  a  bulwark  h  been 
set  up  that  would  withstand  almost  any  possible  s  k. 

Yet  scarcely  had  this  iron-sceptred  rule  come  t(  end 
when  the  state  for  which  the  watchful  old  king  h  done 
and  suffered  so  much,  began  a  surprisingly  rapiu  own- 
ward  career ;  within  a  period  of  ten  years  it  had  aged 

to  maintain  a  dishonorable  inactivity,  within  ri  oy  it 
had  to  face,  not  only  financial  bankruptcy,  but  n  [  and 
intellectual,  political,  and  military  ruin.  How  T  ^erick 
would  have  writhed  in  his  coffin  to  see  th  Prussian 
government  conducted  on  sentimental-myst  principles, 
and  to  find  a  grand  commander  of  the  Ros'  cian  Order 
consulting  images  in  magic  mirrors  as  t  xture  policy! 

Even  outside  of  Prussia,  the  end  of  f  ighteenth  cen¬ 
tury  was  a  halcyon  time  for  spiritual  ,  alchemists,  and 
all  sorts  of  secret  and  mysterious  relations.  Free¬ 
masonry  flourished  in  various  for*  _tnd  one  outcome  of 
it  was  this  Order  of  the  Rosicrucr  —  in  the  ninth  or  high¬ 
est  degree  of  which,  a  brother  rme  as  wise  as  Moses  or 
as  Aaron,  and  could  commar  .nplicit  obedience  from  all 
underlings.  The  occupati'  x  the  brethren  was  the  mys¬ 
tic  interpretation  of  the  .e  and  of  natural  occurrences, 
and  the  communing  vr  .  spirits.  Attempts  were  also 
made  to  create  men  chemical  processes,  to  find  the 

philosopher’s  stone  th  ould  turn  everything  to  gold,  and 

to  provide  an  elixir  outh.  A  professed  object  of  the 

Rosicrucians  in  Pit  was  “  to  further  the  honor  of  the 

Almighty  in  a  falle.  irld  as  a  means  to  the  happiness  of 
the  human  race  ”  x  all  this  was  to  be  done  “by  means 
of  the  exalted  1  xedge  and  powers  bestowed  by  divine 

mercy  on  the  xest  officers  [of  the  order]  and  on  them 
alone.”  J  ,re  reprimand  was  bestowed  on  a  sceptical 
brother  v  refused  to  believe  that  his  superiors  could 
hatch  c Y  ns  from  boiled  eggs. 


THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 


227 


It  was  into  such  an  order  as  this  that  the  Prussian 
king  caused  himself  to  be  initiated  as  Brother  Ormesus 
Magnus ;  and  one  of  the  “  highest  officers,”  W  ollner, 
almost  immediately  recommended  himself  to  him  as  “  an 
unworthy  instrument  by  which  to  save  millions  of  souls 
from  ruin,  and  bring  back  the  whole  land  to  faith  in 
Jesus.”  Wollner  gradually  made  himself  head  of  various 
departments,  and  declared  war  on  the  old  system  of  en¬ 
lightenment.  When  Ministers  Herzberg  and  Hoym  op¬ 
posed  a  certain  taxation  project,  Wollner  complained 
sadly  that  they  “still  had  Satan  in  their  hearts.”  In 
1788,  he  succeeded  in  ousting  the  old  minister,  Zedlitz, 
and  himself  assumed  the  whole  direction  of  Prussia’s  spir¬ 
itual  affairs.  The  king  declared  his  intention  of  no  longer 
permitting  “  that  the  religion  of  Christ  be  undermined,  the 
Bible  made  a  laughing-stock  to  the  people,  and  the  ban¬ 
ners  of  infidelism,  of  deism,  and  of  naturalism  be  openly 
set  up.”  Candidates  for  the  ministry  were  put  through 
most  rigid  tests  ;  a  censorship  was  established  forbidding 
all  discussion  of  religious  or  dogmatic  questions  ;  and  even 
the  great  philosopher  Kant  was  taken  to  task  for  one  of 
his  writings,  and  warned  either  to  make  a  better  use  of 
his  talents  or  to  suffer  the  consequences. 

Such  measures  were  unwiskpnough  in  themselves ;  but  Immorality 
when  it  was  found  that  behind  ikall  there  existed  in  the  of  the 
royal  household  an  almost  unparalleled  immorality,  the  re-  court* 
suit  was  disastrous  alike  to  the  prestige  of  the  throne  and 
to  the  good  conduct  of  the  people.  Frederick  William 
had  not  only  divorced  one  wife,  Elizabeth  of  Brunswick, 
and  kept  a  second,  Louise  of  Hesse-Darmstadt,~in  seclu¬ 
sion  ;  but  there  was  no  secrecy  about  his  connection  with 
the  wife  of  his  chamberlain,  Rietz,  whom  he  raised  to  the 
rank  of  Countess  Lichtenau,  and  who  influenced  him 
throughout  his  whole  reign.  Moreover,  on  the  plea  that 


Frederick 
William’s 
lax  rule. 


228  A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

Martin  Luther  had  excused  such  conduct  in  Philip  of 
Hesse,  he  contracted  bigamous  marriages,  sanctioned  by 
unworthy  priests,  first  with  the  charming  Julie  von  Voss, 
niece  of  the  old  countess ;  then,  on  her  death,  with  Sophie 
Donhoff. 

For  a  time,  Frederick  William  had  made  a  successful 
bid  for  popularity  by  reversing  many  of  the  more  hated 
measures  of  his  predecessor.  The  French  tax-gatherers 
and  coffee-smellers  were  packed  off  in  disgrace  without 
even  the  salaries  they  had  well  earned ;  life  was  made 
more  easy  for  many  citizens,  and  particularly  for  the  wid¬ 
ows  and  orphans  of  soldiers.  The  Miller-Arnold  decision 
was  reversed,  and  Bliicher  and  York,  officers  who  had  been 
under  Frederick’s  displeasure,  were  reinstated  in  the  army. 

Real  wrongs  may  thus  have  been  righted,  real  gener¬ 
osity  exercised ;  there  is  no  doubt  but  that  Frederick 
William  sought  the  happiness  of  his  subjects,  but  his  ten¬ 
der-heartedness  did  them  more  harm  than  good.  The 
taxes  abolished  were  not  replaced  by  other  revenues ; 
aged  officers  were  left  in  the  army,  when,  for  the  sake  of 
the  service,  they  should  have  been  placed  on  the  retired 
list;  land  grants  were  recklessly  made.  Frederick  the 
Great  had  left  an  accumulation  in  the  treasury  of  more 
than  fifty  million  thalers  :  it  took  but  nine  years  to  ex¬ 
haust  this,  and  a  debt  was  begun  which  soon  ran  up  to 
fifty  millions  more. 

It  is  difficult  to  name  a  department  in  which  there  was 
not  some  break  with  the  former  policy.  The  minutiae  of 
drill  wearied  the  king,  so  he  handed  over  the  direction  of 
military  matters  to  a  newly  constituted  board.  Frederick 
had  allowed  outsiders  to  have  little  influence  either  on  his 
internal  or  his  external  policy ;  his  successor  was  in  the 
hands  of  Wollner  and  of  another  Rosicrucian,  Bischoffs- 
werder,  who  had  once  cured  him  of  a  disease,  and  with 


THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 


229 


whom  he  spent  much  time  in  calling  up  the  spirits  of  the 
dead. 

Frederick  had  made  it  a  principle  not  to  thrust  himself 
into  European  politics  where  the  interests  of  Prussia  were 
not  directly  concerned.  “Were  I  to  interfere  in  the  case 
of  every  tiff  in  my  family,”  he  once  said,  “  I  should  soon 
be  at  odds  with  half  of  Europe.”  His  successor,  on  the 
contrary,  almost  immediately  became  involved  in  a  struggle 
between  the  patriotic  and  the  aristocratic  parties  in  Hol¬ 
land,  for  no  other  reason  than  that  the  wife  of  the  Prince 
of  Orange  was  his  own  sister.  Twenty  thousand  Prussians 
marched  into  the  country,  and,  almost  without  bloodshed, 
restored  order  ;  but  no  effort  was  made  to  recover  even  the 
actual  costs  of  the  expedition,  which  amounted  to  six  mill¬ 
ion  thalers ;  while  soldiers  and  officers  alike,  having  to 
face  but  small  opposition,  gained  an  exaggerated  idea  of 
their  own  prowess. 

The  same  inability  to  make  capital  out  of  a  favorable 
situation  showed  itself  in  a  more  serious  degree  with  re¬ 
gard  to  Austria.  The  past  had  proved  conclusively  that 
here  for  all  time  was  Prussia’s  natural  enemy  and  rival  in 
Germany  ;  even  a  tyro  could  have  seen  that  the  only 
proper  policy  was  to  strengthen  and  extend  that  Fiirsten- 
bund  which  had  cried  halt  to  the  house  of  Hapsburg  in 
the  matter  of  the  Bavarian  succession.  There  were  golden 
opportunities  only  waiting  to  be  seized;  for  Joseph  II.’s 
reign  was  ending  in  fiasco  and  revolt,  and  the  Fiirsten- 
bnnd  possessed  a  majority  in  the  electoral  college  sufficient 
to  altogether  exclude  the  old  imperial  line.  Moreover, 
Joseph’s  latest  acts  might  well  be  regarded  as  a  challenge 
to  Prussia ;  for  his  friendship  with  Russia  had  culminated 
in  a  common  attack  upon  Turkey  which  was  intended  as 
a  preliminary  to  further  aggressions  in  the  empire  itself. 
This  threatening  of  the  balance  of  power  led  to  an  alliance 


A  weak 

foreign 

policy. 


Prussia, 
Austria, 
and  Tur¬ 
key. 


V 


A  }  • 


l 


230  A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  Con¬ 
gress  of 
Reichen- 
bach. 


between  Prussia,  England,  and  Holland,  and  to  a  demand 
that  Austria  should  cease  hostilities  in  Turkey.  Fred¬ 
erick  William  was  eager  for  war,  and  drew  his  troops 
together ;  but  his  minister,  Hertzberg,  thought  to  achieve 
his  ends  by  a  series  of  diplomatic  moves,  and  by  changes 
of  territory  that  would  have  given  Moldau  and  Wallachia 
to  Austria,  Galicia  to  Poland,  and  Danzig  and  Thorn  to 
Prussia. 

In  the  end  Austria  was  compelled  to  cease  hostilities  in 
Turkey  and  to  render  back  her  conquests  ;  but  Prussia 
once  more  reaped  nothing  for  herself  but  a  harvest  of 
debts.  Leopold  was  allowed  to  succeed  Joseph  without 
any  counter  concessions  being  asked  or  offered  ;  the  new 
emperor  was  most  adroit  in  appeasing  the  wrath  of  the 
truculent  Prussian  king ;  and,  although  the  Treaty  of  Rei- 
chenbach,  signed  in  1T90,  was  an  apparent  humiliation  for 
Austria,  it  was  in  reality  a  brilliant  victory.  The  Turkish 
conquests  that  were  abandoned  could  never  have  been 
maintained  without  great  difficulty ;  while  Prussia’s  new, 
peaceful  attitude  allowed  Austria  to  settle  her  own  diffi¬ 
culties  with  the  rebels  in  her  Belgian  provinces  and  in 
Hungary. 

Moreover,  in  the  midst  of  the  negotiations,  Frederick 
William  had  shown  his  weakness  of  character  to  the  whole 
world ;  at  the  congress  that  was  held  in  the  little  Silesian 
town  of  Reichenbach  one  set  of  demands  was  on  the  point 
of  being  acceded  to,  after  long  deliberations,  when  others 
of  a  quite  different  nature  were  suddenly  brought  forward. 
These,  too,  Austria  was  obliged  for  the  moment  to  accept, 
but  she  neither  forgave  the  insult  nor  did  she  ultimately 
fulfill  her  agreements.  Prussia  had  been  wasting  her 
forces  ;  she  had  gained  no  material  advantages,  she  had 
exacted  no  valid  pledge  for  the  future.  Worst  of  all,  a 
recognition  of  the  Filrstenbund  had  not  been  made  a  con- 


i 


the  french  revolution 


231 


dltl0n  °f  the  Peace  5  and  the  one  chance  of  forming  a 

t0  AUStrkn  had  b-n 

hafbrr^’ t0  th,6  PrUSSian  State’ the  Frenoh  Revolution 
had  brought  new  dangers  and  difficulties,  to  its  head  new 

opportumtres  of  squandering  treasure  and  prestige  ;  while 

Z£ZkSvTUth1  ^  g°ing  °n  -  ^  caused 

eastern  and  h  !  *7*°°  t0  °scillate  between  his 

eastern  and  his  western  boundaries,  with  the  result  that 

littie  was  accomplished  in  either  direction. 

The  earlier  events  of  the  French  Revolution  had  aroused 
a  ®  a“  amount  of  enthusiasm  in  Germany,  though  not 

aid  Fffiffie  ^1  t0,  aCti0n'  ^  Kant 

imagined  they  were  witnessing  a  practical 

working  out  of  their  own  teachings,  the  trfumph  of  the 
sovereign  ego.  The  former  is  reported  to  have  cried  out 
O  Lord,  now  lettest  Thou  Thy  servant  depart  in  peace 
or  mine  eyes  have  seen  Thy  salvation  ” ;  while  the  latter 
openly  defended  the  right  of  a  people  to  change  its  form 
o  government,  when  necessary,  by  violence.  The  poet 
Klopstoek  wrote  an  ode  to  the  Revolution  and  dressed 
himself  m  mourning  when  Mirabeau  died.  In  Mainz,  in 
Hamburg,  and  in  a  few  other  places,  liberty  poles  were 
erected  and  celebrations  held  in  honor  of  the  storming  of 
e  astile  ;  in  Berlin  women  wore  in  the  streets  the  tri- 
co  ored  badge  of  liberty,  equality,  and  fraternity.  There 
were  few  actual  disturbances,  and  it  mattered  little  to 
Germany  at  large  that  an  abbess  of  Frauenalp  was  driven 
rom  her  tiny  domains.  Moreover,  when  blood  began 
to  flow  so  freely  in  Paris,  all  other  feelings  gave  wav 
o  orror  and  disgust.  “  Cancers  are  not  cured  by  rose¬ 
water,  wrote  one  apologetic  news-leaf  of  the  day  ;  but 

ortunately,  in  Germany,  the  more  radical  remedy  was 
not  popular  and  was  not  employed. 


It 


Theoretical 
enthusiasm 
for  the 
French 
Revolution. 


232 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Friction 
caused 
by  the 
Revolution. 


The  decla¬ 
ration  of 
Pillnitz. 


The  Revolution  could  not  he  kept  within  the  boundaries 
of  France  for  several  reasons  ;  in  the  first  place  the  rights 
of  the  empire  had  been  infringed  upon  when,  on  August 
4,  1789,  all  feudal,  and,  in  June,  1790,  all  ecclesiastical, 
jurisdictions  were  sweepingly  abolished.  Much  of  the 
land  in  Alsace  belonged  to  German  bishops  and  princes ; 
their  rights  had  been  acknowledged  by  the  Peace  of 
Westphalia,  as  well  as  by  later  treaties,  although  their 
status  had  never  been  clearly  established.  France  was 
willing  now  to  pay  some  indemnity,  but  not  to  restore  the 
confiscated  territory.  The  Diet  of  Ratisbon  made  recrimi¬ 
nations,  but,  with  characteristic  dilatoriness,  allowed  the 
matter  to  drag  on  for  two  years.  A  further  leaven  of 
discontent  lay  in  the  fact  that  the  dispossessed  French 
nobles  sought  refuge  on  German  territory,  —  notably  at 
Coblenz,  in  the  archbishopric  of  Treves,  —  where  it  soon 
became  evident  that  they  had  forgotten  none  of  their 
extravagances  and  follies.  Upheld  by  the  archbishop, 
they  set  up  a  gay,  dissipated  little  court  and  commenced 
to  muster  and  drill  an  army,  —  using  the  public  buildings, 
and  even  the  weapons  from  the  arsenals,  for  their  own 
purposes.  Naturally,  such  doings  aroused  the  wildest 
indignation  in  France  and  made  matters  ripe  for  war. 

But  the  chief  cause  of  Germany  being  drawn  into  the 
maelstrom,  was  the  sympathy  of  the  Emperor  Leopold  and 
of  Frederick  William  for  the  luckless  king  and  queen  of 
France.  Leopold  was  the  brother  of  Marie  Antoinette, 
and,  though  long  deaf  to  her  prayers  and  entreaties,  pre¬ 
pared  for  emergencies  by  forming  an  alliance  with  Prussia 
—  an  alliance  for  which  Bischoffswerder  was  responsible 
and  in  which  all  the  advantage  was  on  Austria’s  side. 
This  Treaty  of  Vienna  was  signed  in  July,  1791,  contrary 
to  instructions  and  contrary  to  the  trend  of  opinion  in 
Prussia ;  but  the  Rosicrucian  knew  his  royal  master  and 


THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 


233 


1 


i ' 


1 


I 


i 


i 


* 


,1; 


i 

t 

* 


\ 


easily  procured  his  sanction.  In  an  encyclic  letter,  dated 
at  Padua,  Leopold  had  already  called  upon  the  powers  of 
Europe  to  prepare  to  avenge  any  insult  that  might  be 
offered  to  Louis  XVI.,  and  to  refuse  to  recognize  any 
French  constitution  not  voluntarily  accepted  by  the 
crown.  The  emperor  and  the  king  of  Prussia  then  met 
at  Pillnitz,  in  Saxony,  and  issued  the  meaningless  decla¬ 
ration  that  they  considered  the  affair  of  Louis  XVI.  the 
common  concern  of  all  sovereigns  —  meaningless  because 
all  action  was  to  be  unanimous,  and  it  was  known  before¬ 
hand  that  England  would  not  act  at  all. 
j  The  excitement  was  quelled  for  a  time  by  the  reinstate¬ 
ment  of  Louis  XVI.  in  his  dignities,  and  by  his  voluntary 
oath  to  observe  the  constitution.  Leopold  modified  his 
demands  with  regard  to  the  confiscated  lands  in  Alsace, 
and  joined  with  Prussia  in  ordering  the  Archbishop  of 
Treves  to  desist  from  favoring  the  emigres .  But,  by  this 
time,  the  wilder  Girondins  had  gained  the  upper  hand  in 
the  French  assembly ;  men  like  Brissot  and  Condorcet 
were  convinced  that  war  alone,  by  making  the  republic 
acceptable  to  a  reluctant  majority  and  by  filling  the 
empty  coffers  with  booty,  could  save  France.  To  this 
end  they  exerted  all  their  eloquence :  “  A  people  that 
has  conquered  its  freedom  after  ten  years  of  servitude 
must  have  a  war,”  cried  Brissot  in  a  Jacobin  gathering. 
The  designs  of  the  foreign  powers  were  painted  in  the 
blackest  colors  ;  and  whereas,  at  Padua  and  Pillnitz,  the 
emigres  had  in  reality  been  pushed  aside,  they  were  now 
declared  to  be  at  the  bottom  of  a  great  conspiracy.  A 
demand,  in  the  form  of  an  ultimatum,  was  put  to  Leo¬ 
pold  ;  under  penalty  of  immediate  war  he  was  to  promise 
to  renounce  his  plan  of  a  European  alliance  and  to  show 
his  readiness  to  support  France.  In  answer  to  his  digni¬ 
fied  reply,  war  was  declared  on  the  20th  of  April,  1792,  — - 


The 

Girondins 
bring  about 
war. 


i 


234 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  march 

of  the 

allied 

armies 

under 

Brunswick. 


Valmy  and 
Jemappes. 


the  unfortunate  Louis  XVI.,  already  more  a  corpse  than 
a  man,  being  forced  to  appear  in  the  legislative  assembly 
and  read  the  fateful  words.  The  terrible  era  of  bloodshed 
began,  that  was  not  to  end  for  twenty-two  years. 

In  spite  of  occasional  small  victories  like  those  which 
led  to  the  composing  of  “  Heil  Dir  im  Siege rkranz  ”  in 
1793,  and  to  the  erection  of  the  Brandenburg  gate  as  an 
arch  of  triumph,  the  next  three  campaigns  were  in  reality 
full  of  disasters  for  Germany.  The  reasons  of  this  are  to 
be  found  in  the  misconception  of  the  strength  and  determi¬ 
nation  of  the  French,  in  the  unfortunate  choice  of  a  com- 
mander-in-chief,  and,  finally,  in  the  differences  of  aim  and 
policy  between  Prussia  and  Austria.  In  this  latter  coun¬ 
try  Francis  II.,  a  man  of  the  feeble  stamp  of  Charles  VI., 
had  succeeded  the  capable  Leopold. 

At  the  beginning  there  had  been  real  enthusiasm  for  the 
war  :  “  To  Paris,  to  Paris  !  ”  was  the  cry  of  the  Prussian 
officers  ;  “  a  mere  hunting  party  !  Rossbach  !  Rossbach!  ” 
“Don’t  buy  too  many  horses,”  Bischoffswerder  said'  to 
Colonel  Massenbach,  “  the  comedy  won’t  last  long  !  ”  But 
it  soon  became  evident  that  the  emigres  had  told  out¬ 
rageous  lies  about  the  numbers,  discipline,  and  spirit  of 
the  French  army  ;  as  a  matter  of  fact  there  were  in  1793 
nearly  a  million  sturdy  men  voluntarily  in  arms, — among 
them  dozens  of  the  future  generals  and  marshals  of  France 
—  while,  from  the  people  at  large,  instead  of  the  expected 
cries  of  vive  le  roi ,  the  advancing  army  heard  everywhere 
liberte  et  egalite ,  varied  by  the  mocking  ga  ira  ! 

The  forces  of  the  allies,  numbering  a  hundred  thousand 
men,  were  ridiculously  insufficient  for  the  invasion  of  a  land 
like  France.  The  Austrians  had  sent  but  a  corps  where 
they  should  have  sent  an  army ;  the  arrangements  for  pro¬ 
visioning  were  so  poor  that  halts  were  made  for  no  other 
purpose  than  to  bake  bread ;  while  the  ^mmander,  Duke 


THE  DISRUPTION  OF  GERMANY 


235 


Charles  Ferdinand  of  Brunswick,  who  was  hampered 
besides  by  the  presence  of  Frederick  William  II.  in  camp, 
displayed  an  unparalleled  hesitancy  and  want  of  daring. 
One  who  was  under  his  command  at  this  time  accords  him 
u  great  talents,  deep  insight,  but,  at  decisive  moments,  a 
total  want  of  character.”  He  inaugurated  his  first  expe¬ 
dition  by  one  of  the  most  blatant  and  unwise  manifestoes 
that  ever  was  devised  ;  in  it  the  inhabitants  of  Paris  were 
ordered  to  show  due  respect  to  the  king  and  royal  family, 
else  the  members  of  the  assembly,  of  the  municipality,  and 
of  the  national  guard  would  answer  with  their  heads,  with¬ 
out  hope  of  pardon,  while  the  city  of  Paris  itself  would  be 
delivered  over  to  military  execution  and  total  overthrow. 
This  from  a  man  who  turned  his  back  and  withdrew  from 
renewing  the  charge,  when  on  the  heights  of  Valmy  there 
offered  itself  a  first  great  chance  of  an  almost  certain  vic¬ 
tory  !  His  own  excuse  for  retreating  was  that  h6  feared 
lest  Frederick  William,  with  insufficient  forces,  should 
insist  upon  marching  on  Paris !  Almost  contemporaneously 
with  this  shameful  episode  at  Valmy,  of  which  Goethe 
said  that  night,  “to-day  begins  a  new  era  in  the  world’s 
history,”  came  the  defeat  of  the  Netherland  army 
of  the  Austrians,  at  Jemappes,  and  the  rounding  of  the 
Prussian  flank  by  Custine,  who  fell  on  the  defenceless 
Rhine  bishoprics.  The  elector  of  Mainz  and  his  nobles 
instantly  took  to  flight  with  all  their  treasure,  —  “for  once,” 
writes  a  contemporary,  “  our  beautiful,  venerable  Rhine 
furnished  a  pleasing  spectacle  of  busy  traffic,” —  but  to  the 
lower  classes  there  was  issued  an  archiepiscopal  edict  order¬ 
ing  them  to  stay  where  they  were  under  pain  of  the  high¬ 
est  displeasure  ! 

The  year  1793  was  marked  by  the  death  on  the  scaffold 
of  Louis  XVI.,  and  by  the  formation  of  the  first  great  coa¬ 
lition  of  the  indignant  powers.  Prussia  accomplished  the 


236 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Frederick 

William 

hesitates 

between 

France  and 

Poland. 


The 
“  dumb 
session”  of 
Grodno. 


reconquest  of  Mainz  ;  but,  in  the  midst  of  the  campaign, 
events  in  Poland  brought  about  a  great  division  in  Fred¬ 
erick  William’s  interests,  and  fanned  the  jealousy  of  Aus¬ 
tria  to  a  white  heat.  From  now  on,  neither  on  the  eastern 
nor  on  the  western  frontier,  were  matters  pushed  with  suf¬ 
ficient  emphasis.  At  the  end  of  his  own  resources,  the  suc¬ 
cessor  of  Frederick  the  Great  begged  in  vain  for  subsidies 
from  the  other  German  states,  and  finally  entered  his  whole 
army  into  the  pay  of  the  English  ;  but,  according  to  their 
notions  at  least,  fulfilled  his  part  of  the  contract  so  badly 
that  the  supplies  suddenly  ceased.  He  had  thought  to 
accept  their  money  while  yet  retaining  his  position  as 
head  of  a  great  power  and  choosing  his  own  scene  of  war ; 
whereas  Pitt  treated  the  Prussians  as  the  Hessians  had 
been  treated  in  the  American  war,  and  ordered  his  new 
hirelings  off  to  Belgium. 

In  Poland,  in  1791,  a  liberal  constitution  had  been  set 
up  that  had  the  disadvantage,  from  a  Russian  and  Prussian 
point  of  view,  of  promising  to  make  the  country  strong  and 
united  ;  on  the  plea  that  the  dangerous  ideas  of  the  French 
Revolution  were  here  taking  root,  Catherine  II.,  with  the 
help  of  the  confederation  of  Targowicz,  overthrew  this 
constitution  and  prepared  for  a  second  partition.  Austria 
was  not  consulted  a,t  all,  and  Frederick  William  was  forced 
to  take  what  was  offered,  or  see  the  whole  absorbed  in 
Russia.  His  thoughts  had  been  busy  in  this  direction  far 
more  than  with  France,  and  his  army  pressed  in  to  com¬ 
plete  the  iron  chain  around  Grodno,  where  the  Diet  was 
ordered  to  meet.  Then  followed  the  famous  “  dumb  ses¬ 
sion,”  where  absolute  silence  followed  each  demand  to 
sign  the  Prussian  title-deeds.  After  midnight  had  passed, 
the  presiding  officer,  Count  Ankwicz,  declared  that  silence 
gave  consent ;  and,  when  silence  still  followed  a  threefold 
putting  of  the  question,  Marshal  Bielinski  pronounced 


b 


THE  DISRUPTION  OF  GERMANY  237 

' : 

the  motion  passed.  We  know  now,  in  the  light  of  new 
evidence,  that  the  whole  was  a  concerted  comedy,  designed 
to  protect  the  members,  who  had  all  been  bribed,  from  the 
wrath  of  their  constituents,  —  Ankwicz  and  Bielinski  both 
accepted  rich  rewards  from  Russia.  But  the  falseness  and 
levity  of  the  Poles  themselves  does  not  alter  the  shameful¬ 
ness  of  the  entire  proceeding.  Prussia’s  share  of  the 
robbery  consisted  of  Danzig  and  Thorn,  besides  Posen, 
Gnesen,  Kalisch,  and  other  districts,  —  containing  in  all 
some  twenty-five  thousand  square  miles  and  one  million 
inhabitants.  The  whole  was  given  the  name  of  the  prov¬ 
ince  of  South  Prussia,  and  filled  up  a  great  gap  between 
Silesia  and  West  and  East  Prussia.  To  Poland  there  was 
still  left  about  one-third  of  her  territory  ;  but  her  tenure 

I  of  that  was  none  too  secure. 

The  second  partition  of  Poland  still  further  widened  the 
breach  between  Frederick  William  and  Francis  of  Austria  : 
all  the  more  as  the  latter’s  counter  demand  of  the  right  to 
exchange  the  Netherlands  for  Bavaria  —  a  demand  encour¬ 
aged  so  long  as  it  suited  Prussia’s  interests  —  was  now 
refused.  As  a  result  of  all  this  hostility,  the  war  on  the 
Rhine  was  conducted  with  more  laxness  than  ever  ;  the 
generals,  Kalckreuth  and  Mollendorf,  remained  inactive  at 
important  moments  ;  and,  in  July  and  August,  1794,  Jour- 
dan,  Michaud,  and  Moreau  were  able  to  conquer  Aix-la- 
Chapelle,  Coblenz,  and  indeed  the  whole  left  bank  of  the 
Rhine  with  the  exception  of  Mainz. 

Meanwhile  the  curtain  had  risen  for  the  last  act  of  the 
Polish  tragedy.  Russian  oppression  led  to  a  final  strug¬ 
gle  for  freedom,  of  which  Kosciusko  was  the  intrepid  hero. 
Frederick  William’s  troops  had  a  chance  to  quell  the  re¬ 
volt  before  the  Russian  troops  could  come  up.  At  the 
head  of  his  army  he  did  conquer  Cracow  and  turn  against 
Warsaw;  but  his  evil  genius,  Bischoffswerder,  urged  him 


B 


The  second 
and  third 
partitions 
of  Poland. 


238 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Bad  ad¬ 
ministra¬ 
tion  of  the 
new 

provinces. 


not  to  risk  his  forces  in  an  attack  ;  and  it  was  reserved  for 
the  Russian  Suvarov  to  defeat  Kosciusko’s  army  and  carry 
off  its  leader.  It  was  Russia  and  her  new  ally,  Austria, 
that  now  dictated  the  terms  of  the  final  partition, — forming 
in  January,  1795,  a  secret  compact  with  regard  to  Prussia, 
which  was  to  be  given  Warsaw  and  a  strip  adjoining  East 
Prussia,  but  this,  only  in  the  event  of  her  acquiescing  in 
Russian  and  Austrian  aggrandizement  at  the  expense  of 
Turkey.  At  the  risk  of  losing  the  share  that  he  already 
possessed,  Frederick  William  was  forced  to  submit  and 
to  sign  the  treaty. 

It  may  be  thought  that,  having  by  these  two  partition 
treaties  of  1793  and  1795,  nearly  doubled  its  territory,  he 
had  not  done  badly  for  the  Prussian  state ;  yet  nowhere 
is  the  contrast  to  the  policy  of  Frederick  the  Great  more 
clearly  to  be  seen.  The  province  of  West  Prussia,  all 
surrounded  by  Prussian  territory,  had  been  a  great  gain ; 
and  by  Frederick’s  wise  and  liberal  measures  had  been 
raised  to  the  level  of  the  rest  of  the  kingdom.  The  two 
new  provinces  of  South  Prussia  and  new  East  Prussia,  on 
the  other  hand,  introduced  a  thoroughly  discordant  ele¬ 
ment  and  one  that  could  not  be  assimilated.  The  masses 
continued  priest-ridden  and  ignorant,  and  contributed 
nothing  to  the  common  store;  nor  was  Frederick  William 
the  man  to  carry  out  the  needed  reforms.  On  the  con¬ 
trary,  he  regarded  these  lands  merely  as  a  means  of  en¬ 
riching  his  faithful  supporters  ;  and  he  deeded  away  vast 
estates,  right  and  left,  without  care  or  thought  for  the 
future.  While  other  countries,  in  these  troubled  times, 
were  doubling  their  military  forces,  he  contented  himself 
with  a  very  slight  increase  of  the  army. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  his  resources  were  at  an  end,  his 
friendship  with  Austria  broken,  his  zeal  for  the  French 
campaign  extinguished.  He  could  not  even  say  with 


THE  DISRUPTION  OF  GERMANY 


239 


truth,  u  all  is  lost  save  honor,”  for  that,  too,  was  seriously 
compromised.  Prussia  had  become  the  least  respected  of 
states,  and  it  is  scarcely  to  be  considered  a  step  downward 
when  now,  at  Basel,  she  made  a  separate  peace  with  France, 
one  secret  clause  of  which  boldly  faced  the  prospect  of  the 
left  bank  of  the  Rhine  remaining  in  French  hands.  It  is 
true,  Frederick  William  hoped  that  the  rest  of  Germany 
would  follow  his  example ;  indeed,  as  it  was,  the  Peace  of 
Basel  was  to  apply  to  all  the  states  behind  an  imaginary 
line  of  demarkation,  including  Hanover  and  Saxony.  But 
the  fact  remains  that  he  left  others  to  fight  his  battles,  and 
that  he  was  willing  to  sacrifice  German  lands,  —  merely 
stipulating  that,  if  Prussia  should  lose  her  own  outlying 
provinces,  she  should  be  indemnified  at  the  expense  of 
some  power  or  powers  on  the  right  bank  of  the  Rhine. 

There  is  a  great  difference  of  opinion  between  the  con¬ 
temporary  observer  and  the  modern  historian  as  to  the 
merits  of  this  treaty.  Frederick  William  wrote  to  Cath¬ 
erine  that  he  considered  himself  as  merely  following  in 
the  footsteps  of  Frederick  the  Great,  by  first  securing  his 
territory,  and  then  preserving  it  in  peace.  Hardenberg, 
the  future  reformer,  approved  the  step  ;  and  Kant  was 
moved  by  the  news  to  write  his  treatise  on  perpetual 
peace.  A  transient  era  of  commercial  prosperity  beguiled 
the  masses.  But,  seen  in  its  right  perspective,  this  peace 
unmasks  itself  as  the  beginning  of  the  end,  as  an  abdica¬ 
tion  on  the  part  of  Prussia  of  all  her  rights  and  privileges. 
Her  most  passionate  lover  and  advocate  of  to-day,  the  late 
court  historian,  Yon  Treitschke,  considers  that  no  defeat  in 
battle  could  have  humbled  this  state  as  she  now  humbled 
herself,  that  an  open  alliance  with  an  enemy’ would  have 
been  preferable  to  this  pusillanimity,  that  here  at  Basel 
was  committed  the  most  serious  political  error  of  modern 
German  history,  an  error  that  had  to  be  atoned  for  through 
two  decades  of  unparalleled  misery. 


The  sepa¬ 
rate  Peace 
of  Basel. 


The  Treaty 
of  Basel  a 
grave  error. 


240 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Napoleon 
Bonaparte 
in  Italy. 


The  Treaty 
of  Camp* 
Formio. 


Prussia  stood  aside,  now,  while  Austria  continued  the 
war, — continued  it,  with  little  help  from  the  empire,  against 
five  French  armies,  one  of  which  was  commanded  by  the 
rising  genius  of  the  age,  Napoleon  Bonaparte.  The  latter 
was  sent  to  Italy  in  the  spring  of  1796,  and  soon  began 
to  display  his  marvellous  abilities,  —  showing  to  the  world 
a  new  and  wonderful  kind  of  strategy  that  required  no 
base  of  supplies,  and,  indeed,  that  bade  defiance  to  all 
the  old  rules  of  warfare.  He  attached  his  soldiers  to  his 
own  interests  by  furnishing  them  with  booty  in  plenty : 
“  I  will  lead  you  into  the  most  fruitful  plains  in  the 
world,”  he  had  said  to  them ;  “  flourishing  provinces, 

great  cities,  will  be  at  your  disposal.”  In  return,  he  de¬ 
manded  courage  and  steadfastness  and  a  willingness  to  die 
by  thousands  in  pursuit  of  great  objects.  His  design  was 
to  master  Mantua  and  control  the  passes  of  the  Tyrol ; 
then  to  join  with  the  Rhine  army  under  Moreau  and 
Jourdan  and  completely  crush  the  enemy.  As  far  as  the 
Italian  scene  of  warfare  was  concerned,  he  was  successful : 
making  a  separate  peace  with  the  emperor’s  Sardinian 
allies,  taking  and  holding  Mantua  against  four  attempts 
to  relieve  it,  gaining  the  battles  of  Areola  and  Rivoli,  and 
bringing  Lombardy,  Venice,  and  the  papal  states  to  terms. 
But  Moreau  and  Jourdan,  after  achieving  several  victo¬ 
ries,  were  forced  back  across  the  Rhine  by  the  brave  young 
Archduke  Charles ;  and  the  principalities  of  W iirtemberg 
and  Baden,  which  had  gone  over  to  the  French,  thought 
best  to  renew  their  allegiance  to  the  empire. 

Napoleon,  from  political  motives  and  from  a  desire  to 
have  the  peace  all  his  own,  had  made  overtures  to  Austria 
even  while  preparing  to  deal  further  blows:  Professing 
to  be  animated  by  the  most  humane  of  motives,  he  wrote 
that  he  would  feel  prouder  of  the  humble  crown  to  be 
earned  by  saving  a  single  human  life,  than  of  all  the 


THE  DISRUPTION  OF  GERMANY 


241 


mournful  glory  that  could  come  of  success  in  war.  He 
was  willing  that  Austria  should  emerge  from  the  long 
conflict  no  poorer  in  territory  than  she  had  entered  it ; 
but  the  map  of  Europe  was  to  be  cut  according  to  his 
own  pattern,  and  Austria  was  to  definitely  abandon  the 
cause  of  the  empire.  Baron  Stein,  with  whose  grand 
character  we  shall  soon  become  familiar,  calls  the  treaty 
that  was  signed  on  October  IT,  1T97,  “the  black  and 
complete  treachery  of  Campo  Formio  ” ;  yet  it  was  scarcely 
more  black  than  the  Peace  of  Basel  of  1795,  or  than  a 
subsequent  treaty  of  August,  1796,  that  gave  Prussia 
definite  compensation  in  case  of  the  sequestration  of  Cleves 
and  Guelder s.  In  the  new  treaty  of  France  with  Austria, 
as  well  as  in.  that  with  Prussia,  the  clauses  regarding  the 
left  bank  of  the  Rhine  were  secret;  in  both  cases  the 
leading  powers  in  Germany  promised  to  abandon  to  their 
fate  provinces  that  contained  the  coronation  place  as  well 
as  the  first  archiepiscopal  see  of  the  old  empire.  Austria’s 
reward  was  to  be  the  dismembered  republic  of  Venice,  — 
for  which  she  had  long  lusted,  —  the  archbishopric  of 
Salzburg,  and,  possibly,  Bavaria  as  far  as  the  river  Inn. 
Belgium,  on  the  other  hand,  was  to  fall  to  France;  while 
Lombardy  was  to  be  allowed  to  join  the  Cisalpine  Repub¬ 
lic,  one  of  Napoleon’s  new  vassal  states.  The  conqueror 
himself  has  said  of  this  Treaty  of  Campo  Formio,  that  he 
considered  it  one  of  the  most  advantageous  that  France 
had  signed  for  centuries  ;  while  the  emperor,  too,  had 
every  reason  to  be  satisfied,  although,  by  secularizing 
Salzburg,  he  gave  the  signal  for  a  descent  upon  the  lands 
of  the  clergy  in  Germany. 

As  Austria  had  no  possible  right  or  authority  to  deed  The  Con* 
away  territory  of  the  empire,  it  was  necessary  to  call  a  Sress  of 
congress  for  that  purpose.  With  characteristic  duplicity  Rastadt* 
the  summons  invited  the  different  states  to  send  repre- 

VOL.  II — R 


242 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Weakness 
of  the 
empire. 


sentatives  to  the  town  of  Rastadt  who  should  treat  of 
constitutional  affairs  on  the  basis  of  the  integrity  of  Ger - 
many.  Matters  pertaining  to  the  public  weal  were  to  be 
settled  so  as  to  conduce  for  centuries  to  the  lasting  joy 
of  peace-loving  humanity.  The  withdrawal  of  the  em¬ 
peror’s  forces  from  Mainz,  of  which  the  French  were 
allowed  to  take  possession,  and  the  simultaneous  entry 
of  the  Austrian  troops  into  Venice,  gave  the  first  official 
betrayal  of  the  whole  scheme.  France’s  plenipotentiaries 
at  the  congress  now  came  out  with  their  unvarnished 
demand  for  the  left  bank  of  the  Rhine,  and  the  German 
princes  whose  lands  were  to  be  taken  began  to  clamor  for 
compensation  and  to  throw  themselves  upon  the  gener¬ 
osity  of  the  national  enemy.  It  was  the  beginning  of 
an  ignoble  race  for  gain,  inasmuch  as  each  power,  Prussia 
included,  thought  by  French  influence  to  greatly  better 
its  previous  condition.  Even  the  Poles  when  robbed  of 
their  fatherland  had  acted  with  more  dignity.  It  was 
during  a  hasty  visit  to  this  congress  that  Napoleon  Bona¬ 
parte  gained  his  first  insight  into  German  politics  and 
German  character,  which  may  well  account  for  the  con¬ 
temptuousness  with  which  he  always  treated  this  people. 

And,  indeed,  the  empire  of  Charlemagne  was  nearing 
the  last  stages  of  paralysis.  In  January,  1798,  the  witty 
publicist,  Gorres,  drew  up  its  last  will  and  testament,  rec¬ 
ommending  that  its  latest  committee  or  deputation,  here  at 
Rastadt,  should  become  permanent  and  conclude  a  per¬ 
petual  peace,  each  article  of  which  should  be  discussed  in 
at  least  fifty  thousand  session^ ;  that  its  army  be  handed 
over  to  the  Landgrave  of  Hesse  to  be  sold  out  to  the 
highest  bidder,  and  its  archives  turned  into  smelling-salts 
in  case  the  heirs  should  be  attacked  with  faintness. 
Although  the  Congress  of  Rastadt  continued  in  session 
for  more  than  a  year,  the  last  months  were  spent  in  fruit- 


THE  DISRUPTION  OF  GERMANY  243 

k  * 

less  controversy,  and  Austria  was  already  treating1  with. 

England  and  Russia  for  the  formation  of  a  second  great 
coalition.  The  conduct  of  the  French  had  become  un¬ 
bearable  to  Austria ;  instead  of  assisting  the  emperor  to 
his  promised  portion  of  Bavaria,  instead  of  excepting  Prus¬ 
sia’s  provinces  from  the  general  annexation  of  the  left 
bank  of  the  Rhine  so  that  she  might  have  no  claim  to 
compensation,  they  were  growing  more  and  more  friendly 
to  this  arch-enemy.  And  their  demands  at  the  congress 
kept  increasing  beyond  rhyme  or  reason.  Germany  was 
to  assume  all  debts  of  the  annexed  districts  and  pay  them 
out  of  the  revenues  of  ecclesiastical  territory;  the  islands 
of  the  Rhine  were  to  be  included  in  the  cession.  What 
good,  it  was  finally  argued,  would  the  left  bank  prove  to 
France  if  controlled  by  forts  across  the  river?  Kehl  and 
Castel  must  be  handed  over,  and  the  impregnable  Ehren- 
breitstein  completely  demolished.  Hostilities  were  pre¬ 
cipitated  by  the  action  of  Bernadotte,  who  was  acting  as 
envoy  in  Vienna.  In  scorn  of  a  local  military  celebration, 
he  threw  out  a  great  tricolored  flag  from  his  balcony,  and 

when  it  was  torn  down  demanded  his  passports  and  re¬ 
turned  to  Paris. 

The  time  for  a  general  attack  by  the  other  great  powers  The  second 
of  Europe  on  France  and  her  daughter  republics  seemed  coalition 
well  chosen  :  Napoleon  Bonaparte  was  absent,  having  been  war‘ 
sent  to  Egypt  to  strike  a  blow  at  England  in  the  East ; 

Hoche,  the  next  commander  in  ability,  had  just  died ;  the 
new  Czar,  Paul,  was  as  much  in  earnest  as  his  mother  had 

I  been  the  contrary.  It  is  true,  Prussia  held  aloof  entirely, 
but  Prussia  was  now  regarded,  even  by  her  own  new 
ruler,  as  an  unimportant  factor. 

The  hero  of  the  first  period  of  this  second  coalition  war  Suvarov. 
was  undoubtedly  the  Russian,  Suvarov;  in  a  series  of 
brilliant  marches  and  actions  he  recovered  nearly  the 


244 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  peace 
of  Lun£- 
ville. 


whole  of  Italy ;  while  Archduke  Charles,  by  the  battle  of 
Stockach,  stopped  Jourdan  and  drove  him  back  across  the 
Rhine.  Meanwhile  the  French  envoys  at  Rastadt,  who, 
even  after  the  coalition  had  begun  its  military  operations, 
had  continued  to  treat  with  the  minor  German  powers, 
were  ordered  to  withdraw,  and  then  foully  set  upon,— by 
order,  it  is  believed,  of  the  Austrian  prime  minister  Thu- 
o-ut,  whose  object  was  to  procure  certain  valuable  state 
papers  of  which  they  had  possession.  The  outcome  oi 
the  melee,  fatal  in  the  case  of  two  of  the  envoys,  increased 
the  hatred  felt  by  the  French,  who,  however,  as  yet  were 
powerless  to  requite  such  evil.  It  was  the  good  fortune 
of  France,  however,  that  in  not  one  of  these  great  coa  1- 
tions  was  any  single  power  willing  to  subordinate  its  own 
interests  to  those  of  the  common  cause.  Austria  expected 
Suvarov  to  lay  Italy  at  her  feet ;  Russia  desired  to  reestab¬ 
lish  the  sovereignties  that  Napoleon  had  abolished,  and 
her  general,  at  last,  thwarted  at  every  point,  downnghtly 
refused  to  besiege  Genoa,  which  was  the  last  stronghold 
of  the  French.  At  England’s  suggestion,  and  hoping  to 
be  more  free  from  restraint,  he  left  the  scene  of  his  vic¬ 
tories  and  started  through  Switzerland  to  meet  additional 
Russian  forces  that  were  coming  from  the  North,  but  —  as 
he  himself  believed,  through  Austrian  treachery  —  accom¬ 
plished  nothing  beyond  a  series  of  phenomenal  Alpine 
marches.  Toward  the  end  of  the  year  1799,  in  deep  dis¬ 
gust,  the  Czar,  who  fully  shared  Suvarov’s  suspicions 
as  to  Austrian  duplicity,  called  home  his  forces. 

At  the  same  time  Napoleon  Bonaparte  returned  from 
Egypt,  joined  with  Sieves  in  a  successful  attempt  to  over¬ 
throw  the  existing  constitution  in  France,  and  then,  as 
First  Consul,  clothed  with  absolute  power,  prepared  by  a 
theatrical  march  across  the  St.  Bernard  to  alter  the  com. 
plexion  of  affairs  in  Italy.  The  unrivalled  victories  oi 


THE  DISRUPTION  OF  GERMANY 


245 

Marengo  and  of  Hohenlinden  soon  brought  Austria  back 
to  the  position  she  had  occupied  at  the  time  of  the  Treaty 
of  Campo  Formio;  and  the  Peace  of  Luneville,  signed  in 
February,  1801,  was  a  practical  repetition  of  that  earlier 
agreement,  except  that  the  last  veil  of  secrecy  was  with¬ 
drawn  from  the  cession  of  the  Rhine  provinces,  and  that 
France  was  conceded  a  voice  in  the  matter  of  compen¬ 
sation.  Moreover,  in  accordance  with  Napoleon’s  peremp¬ 
tory  demand,  the  agreements  were  signed  by  the  emperor 
not  merely  in  the  name  of  Austria  but  also  of  the  whole 
empiie ;  the  cession  of  land  which,  including  Belgium, 
aggregated  some  twenty-eight  thousand  square  miles  and 
contained  three  and  a  half  million  inhabitants,  was  thus 
finally  consummated  and  the  Rhine  became  the  boundary 
between  France  and  Germany.  The  new  acquisitions  were 
divided  into  departments  after  the  manner  of  the  rest  of 
the  territory  of  the  French  republic,  while  the  question  of 
the  indemnities  was  reserved  for  further  negotiations. 

Meanwhile,  in  Prussia,  soon  after  the  peace  of  Campo 
Formio,  there  had  been  a  change  of  ruler ;  for  Frederick 
William  II.,  in  spite  of  the  aurum  potabile ,  or  liquid  gold, 
administered  by  his  Rosicrucian  brethren,  had  died  of 
dropsy.  The  hearts  of  the  people  had  gone  out  to  his 
virtuous  young  successor,  and  especially  to  the  latter’s 
beautiful  and  charming  wife,  —  Queen  Louise,  a  Mecklen¬ 
burg  princess,  —  who  rewarded  their  adoration  in  this  very 
year,  1797,  by  giving  birth  to  that  William  who  was  one 
lay  to  become  the  consummator  of  German  unity.  So 
^ood  were  Frederick  William  III.’s  intentions,  so  free 
md  liberal  his  promises,  that  nothing  but  plaudits  were 
leard  on  all  sides.  “This  prince  spoils  our  revolution,” 
i  French  Jacobin  complained;  while  an  eloquent  German 
exclaimed  joyfully,  “  Pure  reason  has  descended  from 
leaven  and  taken  its  seat  upon  our  throne.”  An  enthu- 


Death  of 
Frederick 
William  II. 
and 

enthusiasm 
for  the 
new  king. 


Incapacity 

of 

Frederick 

William 

III. 


Division  of 
the  spoils  of 
Germany. 


246  A  SHORT  HISTORY  O  GERMANY 

siastic  band  of  admirers  founded  a  set  of  Prussian  year 
books  in  which  to  chronicle  the  expected  reforms. 

But  if  Frederick  William  III.  possessed  all  the  piety,  j 
all  the  morality,  and  all  the  sense  of  duty  that  could  be 
required  from  any  Christian  man,  he  was,  nevertheless, 
absolutely  incapable  of  guiding  a  state  like  Prussia 
through  a  period  of  storm  and  stress.  Timid,  ill- trained, 
and  inexperienced,  —  a  mere  pygmy  compared  to  Frederick  j 
the  Great,  — he  was  yet  called  upon  to  govern  a  greatly 
enlarged  state  and  to  face  an  enemy  like  Napoleon  Bona¬ 
parte.  With  his  full  share  of  Hohenzollern  obstinacy, 
Be  clung  to  his  absolutism  and  refused  to  set  up  compe- 
tent  ministers ;  the  consequence  was  that  his  cabinet 
secretaries,  petty  men  like  Lombard,  Beyme,  and  Haug- 
witz,  assumed  undue  influence,  insinuated  where  they  had 
no  authority  to  advise,  and  finally  landed  the  ship  of  state 
on  the  rocks  of  Tilsit. 

The  worst  of  the  political  faults  was  the  continued  com¬ 
plaisance  shown  to  France.  The  scheme  of  that  power? 
for  compensating  with  ecclesiastical  lands  on  the  right  jj 
bank  of  the  Rhine  those  princes  who  had  lost  possessions  J 
on  the  left,  was  not  only  acquiesced  in  but  warmly  advo-J 
cated ;  indeed,  Prussia  went  so  far  as  to  accept  for  her-!: 
self  five  times  the  amount  of  territory  she  had  forfeited.  | 
Although  nominally  in  the  hands  of  a  committee  of  the! 
Diet  known  as  the  Imperial  Deputation,  the  work  of  divid-| 
ing  the  spoils  was  really  carried  on  at  Paris.  Thither,  asjj 
suppliants,  went  the  dispossessed  in  person:  the  Solms,j 
Laubachs,  the  Ley  ns  and  Leiningens,  the  Isenburgs  and  j 
Hechingens,  and  a  number  of  others.  Treitschke  calls! 
them  a  swarm  of  hungry  flies  feasting  on  the  bloody 
wounds  of  their  fatherland.  Gagern,  the  envoy  from 
Nassau,  relates  how  unworthily  they  sued  for  the  favoij 
of  Talleyrand  and  of  his  secretary,  Mathieu;  how  they  j 


s 

if 


THE  DISRUPTION  OF  GERMANY  247 

|4 

caressed  the  minister’s  little  poodle  and  played  blind- 
man  s-buff  and  drop-the-handkercliief  with  his  favorite 
niece.  It  rained  snuff-boxes,  rising  in  value  to  20,000 
guldens,  while  Hesse-Darmstadt  offered  a  bribe  of  a  round 
million. 

When  all  had  been  happily  arranged,  the  act  which  is 
known  as  the  Principal  Decree  of  the  Imperial  Deputa¬ 
tion  (February  25th,  1803)  annihilated  112  German 
states,  in  addition  to  the  97  ceded  to  France,  and  divided 
up  50,000  square  miles  of  territory  with  more  than 

'  3,000,000  inhabitants.  When  the  decree  was  referred 
to  the  Diet  for  ratification,  that  body  acted  with  char¬ 
acteristic  regard  to  ceremonial :  in  order  to  make  the 
vote  valid,  the  dispossessed  members  were  ordered  to  be 
present,  but,  as  each  answered  to  his  name,  he  was  for¬ 
mally  entered  as  “absent”  in  the  roll.  By  this  exten¬ 
sive  confiscation  of  church  and  civic  property,  the 
number  of  ecclesiastical  princes  was  reduced  to  three, 
that  of  the  free  cities  to  six.  Mainz  retained  the  arch¬ 
chancellorship,  but  was  forced  to  exchange  its  lands ; 
in  place  of  Cologne  and  Treves  four  other  principalities 
were  raised  to  the  rank  of  electorates:  Salzburg,  Wiir- 
temberg,  Baden,  and  Hesse.  Upon  the  last-named  three 
states,  as  well  as  upon  Bavaria,  it  had  been  Napoleon’s 
policy  to  heap  all  the  benefits  in  his  power,  in  order  to 
have  a  “  Third  Germany  ”  to  make  use  of  against  Prussia 
and  Austria.  For  that  reason  Baden  was  given  in  com¬ 
pensation  for  her  lost  territory  ten  times  as  much  as  was 
her  due  ;  Prussia’s  acquisitions,  on  the  other  hand,  though 
not  inconsiderable,  were  to  be  as  far  as  possible  away 
from  France. 

After  the  passing  of  the  Principal  Decree  of  the  Im¬ 
perial  Deputation,  the  events  that  led  to  the  ending  of 
the  Holy  Roman  Empire  and  to  the  extraordinary  catas- 


r 


The  Princi¬ 
pal  Decree 
of  the  Im¬ 
perial 

Deputation. 


248 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Napoleon’s 
occupation 
of  Hanover. 


tronhe  of  Prussia,  followed  each  other  in  rapid  succession. 
TrM  William  had  been  in  the  enjoyment  of  his  ill- 
gotten  gains  but  a  few  months  when  he  was  awakened 
from  his  dream  of  being  the  protector  of  North  Germany 
by  the  announcement  that  Napoleon  meant  to  strixe  Eng¬ 
land  “  wherever  he  could  reach  her.”  Soon  afterward, 
French  forces  under  Mortier  were  entering  Hanover.  It  j 
cannot  be  said  that  there  was  much  love  lost  between  the  j 
Prussian  and  Hanoverian,  or  between  the  Prussian  and 
English  governments,  but  every  instinct  of  self-preserva¬ 
tion  should  have  driven  the  king  to  an  energetic  protest,  , 
and,  if  necessary,  to  war.  Even  Haugwitz  recommended 
the  immediate  despatch  of  an  armed  force.  Here  was 
the  enemy  whom  Prussia  had  most  reason  to  dread  at  | 
her  very  throat ;  Hanover  almost  cut  her  domains  in  two, 
and  the  French  army  was  encamped  close  to  the  walls 
of  her  chief  fortress  of  Magdeburg.  Yet  Frederick  Will¬ 
iam  remained  inactive  while  the  whole  Hanoverian  army  j 
capitulated,  while  all  the  wealth  of  the  land  was  appro¬ 
priated,  and  evren  the  forests  were  cut  down  and  carried 
off  to  France  to  furnish  masts  for  the  conqueror  s  ships.^ 
Even  when  Napoleon  proceeded  to  block  the  mouths  of  j 
the  rivers  Elbe  and  Weser,  and  thus  strike  a  deadly  blow 
at  Prussian  commerce,  this  king  could  think  of  no  other 
expedient  than  to  send  to  Brussels  the  self-sufficient  Lom¬ 
bard  with  a  few  sentimental  reproaches.  He  was  sure,  | 
Frederick  William  wrote,  that  in  occupying  Cuxhaven  j 
Napoleon’s  general  had  exceeded  his  commands.  Lom¬ 
bard  was  delighted  with  the  suavity  of  his  reception  by 
the  powerful  First  Consul.  “  What  I  cannot  reproduce, 
he  wrote  in  his  report,  “  is  the  tone  of  kindness  and  open 
frankness  with  which  he  expressed  his  regard  for  your 
rights.”  Dazzled,  blinded,  by  Napoleon’s  greatness,  he 
could  not  praise  enough  the  truthfulness,  the  loyalty,  the  ; 


THE  DOWNFALL  OF  PRUSSIA  249 

r- 

friendship  that  rang  out  in  every  word,  and  he  returned 
fiom  his  mission  without  having  obtained  the  fulfilment 
of  one  single  demand. 

And  b  rederick  William  had  no  wrath  to  vent  upon 
this  empty  head.  uThe  king  is  determined  once  for  all,” 
wrote  Haugwitz,  who  himself  was  soon  to  emulate  the 
conduct  of  Lombard,  u  to  show  to  all  Europe  in  the  most 
open  manner  that  he  will  positively  have  no  war  unless 
he  is  himself  directly  attacked.”  Yet  the  time  was  not 
unsuitable ;  the  political  constellation  was  favorable,  while 
Napoleon  was  too  full  of  his  intended  invasion  of  Eng¬ 
land,  for  which  he  was  massing  his  troops  on  the  Bou¬ 
logne  shore,  to  wish  for  a  struggle  with  Prussia  and 
Hanover  combined. 

Following  quickly  on  the  occupation  of  Hanover  came 
the  outrageous  violation  of  German  territory  involved  in 
the  murder  of  the  Duke  of  Enghien,  —  a  member  of  the 
House  of  Bourbon,  who  was  declared  to  have  taken  part 
in  a  royalist  conspiracy  against  the  life  of  the  First  Con¬ 
sul.  Enghien  was  seized  in  his  own  house,  at  Ettenheim, 
in  Baden,  by  bands  of  b  rench  soldiers,  who  had  marched 
up  in  the  silence  of  the  night ;  he  was  dragged  to  Vin¬ 
cennes,  and,  within  the  shortest  possible  space  of  time, 
tried  before  a  court-martial,  sentenced,  and  shot  by  his 
own  open  grave.  Scarcely  an  attempt  was  made  to  ex¬ 
cuse  such  conduct,  though  Baden  and  the  empire  were  at 
peace  with  France ;  and  Germany  had  sunk  so  low  that 
there  was  no  remonstrance  at  the  flagrant  breach,  of  inter¬ 
national  law.  The  servile  elector  of  Baden,  when  driven  to 
the  wall,  pretended  that  Napoleon  had  asked  his  consent. 
When  Russia  tried  to  stir  the  Diet  to  action,  the  elector 
wrote,  at  his  master’s  dictation,  that  he  thanked  the  Czar 
for  his  interest,  but  had  full  confidence  in  the  friendship 
and  good  sentiments  of  the  French  court.  And  the  Diet 


The  murder 
of  the 
Duke  of 
Enghien. 


250 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Servility  of 
the  South 
German 
states. 


Austria 
becomes  an 
empire. 


itself  escaped  responsibility  by  flight,  entering  upon  its 
holidays  before  it  was  time.  In  the  popular  mind,  in¬ 
deed,  the  incident  engendered  intense  bitterness  ;  Beetho- 
yen  turned  the  slow  movement  of  his  new  symphony  into 
a  funeral  march,  and  dedicated  it  to  the  dead  hero,  rather 
than  exalt,  as  he  had  intended,  the  great  conqueror.  j 

To  Frederick  William’s  tender  heart  the  murder  of  the 
Duke  of  Enghien  was  such  a  blow  that  it  put  an  end  for  : 
the  time  being  to  the  project  of  a  Franco-Prussian  alli¬ 
ance  ;  although  Napoleon  of  late  had  been  overflowing 
with  kindness,  and  had  significantly  hinted  at  a  plan  of  i 
forming  a  North  German  empire  with  the  Hohenzollern 
at  its  head.  The  South  German  states,  indeed,  did  not 
waver  in  their  subserviency ;  and  when,  on  May  18,  1804,  | 

their  patron  was  proclaimed  emperor,  they  outdid  the  | 
French  themselves  in  the  warmth  of  their  congratula¬ 
tions  and  in  the  fulsomeness  of  their  flattery,  declaring  ^ 
that  this  new  Csesar  was  most  like  to  their  own  first  em-  | 
peror,  Charlemagne,  and  recommending  themselves  for 
further  favors,  should  there  be  any  more  lands  to  divide,  j 
Nothing  could  have  exceeded  the  jubilation  with  which 
Napoleon  was  greeted  on  the  occasion  of  a  journey 

through  the  Rhine  provinces. 

Austria  at  this  juncture  considered  it  time  to  get  to 
cover,  as  it  were,  well  knowing  that  at  the  next  election  a 
Protestantized  and  secularized  electoral  college  would  not 
be  likely  to  favor  the  Hapsburg  dynasty.  With  the  con- 
sent  of  Napoleon,  and  after  having,  in  return,  recognized 
the  latter’s  new  dignity,  Francis  II.,  in  this  same  year 
1804,  adopted  the  title  of  hereditary  emperor  of  Austria, 
without  as  yet  formally  divesting  himself  of  that  of  em¬ 
peror  of  the  Romans.  He  grounded  his  action  on  the 
greatness  of  his  house,  which,  as  he  declared,  although 
divine  providence  and  the  vote  of  the  electors  had  j 


Ifc 


THE  DOWNFALL  OF  PRUSSIA  251 

•< 

brought  it  to  such  a  pitch  of  glory  that  its  head  person¬ 
ally  needed  neither  added  title  nor  prestige,  —  ought  not 
to  be  behind  any  European  power  in  outward  rank. 

Meanwhile,  Alexander  of  Russia,  still  indignant  over 
the  murder  of  the  Duke  of  Enghien,  for  whom  he  ordered 
his  court  to  wear  mourning,  and  displeased  with  the 
result  of  his  protests  in  Paris,  —  convinced,  too,  that 
Napoleon  was  cogitating  a  general  European  war, — had 
begun  to  treat  in  London  and  Vienna  for  the  formation  of 
a  third  coalition.  In  November,  1804,  Austria  closed  with 
him  a  defensive  alliance  in  the  event  of  the  French  en¬ 
deavoring  to  extend  their  sphere  of  influence  in  Italy.  In 
April,  1805,  England  agreed  to  aid  Russia  in  raising  a 
European  army  of  half  a  million  of  men  with  which  to 
restore  the  threatened  balance  of  power.  Napoleon  in  the 
meantime  had  demeaned  his  greatness  —  so  he  wrote  to 
the  Czar  —  to  the  extent  of  accepting  the  Italian  crown. 
The  incorporation  of  Genoa  in  the  French  empire,  and  the 
excessive  jubilations  over  former  French  victories  in  Italy, 
then  forced  Austria  into  open  hostility. 

Both  France  and  the  coalition  worked  hard  to  secure  an 
alliance  with  Frederick  William  III.,  whose  army  of  two 
hundred  thousand  men  was  likely  to  be  an  important  factor 
in  the  struggle.  William  Pitt  suggested  as  as  inducement 
to  Prussia  the  proffer  of  the  left  bank  of  the  Rhine,  and, 
if  need  be,  of  Belgium;  while  Napoleon  held  out  the  bait 
of  Hanover,  which,  however,  could  only  have  been  main¬ 
tained  at  the  cost  of  a  war  with  England.  Yet  between 
these  two  possibilities,  Frederick  William  wavered  and 
pursued  a  zigzag  policy ;  and  finally,  angered  at  the  Rus¬ 
sian  threats  of  violating  his  territory,  sought  his  usual 
refuge  of  feeble  neutrality.  Out  of  this  he  was  roused 
by  the  news  that  France  had  actually  committed  the  act 
that  Russia  had  only  threatened;  full  of  righteous  indig- 


L 

i 

f 


The  form¬ 
ing  of  the 
third 
coalition. 


252 


A  SHORT  HI  RY  OF  GERMANY 


Napoleon 
and  Mack. 


The  sur¬ 
render  at 
Ulm. 


nation  lie  mobilized  his  army,  yet,  even  then,  sent  Haug- 
witz  to  carry  on  further  negotiations  with  Napoleon,  and 
allowed  his  commander-in-chief,  the  Duke  of  Brunswick, 
to  fix  the  latest  date  possible  for  effecting  his  junction 

witli  the  Austrians. 

To  Napoleon  the  news  of  the  arming  of  the  coalition 
came  very  opportunely ;  for  two  years  he  had  been  per¬ 
fecting  and  drilling  his  army  for  the  ostensible  purpose  of 
crossing  the  channel  and  “avenging  the  disgrace  of  six 
centuries”  against  England.  His  admiral,  Villeneuve,  ha 
succeeded  in  luring  Nelson’s  fleet  to  the  West  Indies,  but 
not  in  keeping  it  there;  and  the  prospect  for  Napoleon  of 
achieving  his  design  of  invasion,  if  he  really  ever  serious  y 
cherished  it,  must  have  seemed  more  distant  than  ever. 
Instead,  that  alternative  which  had  always  been  present  in 
his  mind  now  presented  itself  with  redoubled  force.  e 
knew  the  Austrians  better  than  did  Pitt,  although  tie 
latter  had  complained  of  these  “  gentlemen  in  Vienna 
that  they  were  always  one  year,  one  army,  and  one  idea 
behindhand.  Napoleon  had  even  had  personal  dealings 
with  the  general-in-chief,  Mack,  who  in  1799  had  been  a 
prisoner  in  Paris.  The  opinion  there  formed  had  been 
extremely  unfavorable  ;  this  was  just  the  kind  of  enemy 
the  French  Emperor  longed  to  have  his  generals  meet. 
“  He  is  certainly  one  of  the  most  incapable  men  in  exist¬ 
ence,”  he  declared;  “and,  moreover,  he  has  bad  luck.” 

Mack  had  been  chosen  for  his  present  position,  to  the 
detriment  of  the  Archduke  Charles,  not  because  of  any 
achievements  in  the  field,  but  rather  by  reason  of  the 
fertility  of  his  brain  in  making  brilliant  plans.  Unfor¬ 
tunately  there  was  wanting  a  basis  of  caution  and  foresight. 
While  Napoleon  was  informed  of  every  slight  move  of  his 
enemies,  while  his  spies  circulated  freely  m  the  Austrian 
camp  in  the  guise  of  wine-dealers,  Mack  did  not  have  the 


THE  DOWNFALL  OF  PRUSSIA  253 

M 

least  conception  that  already,  for  three  weeks,  armies  had 
been  marching  from  all  directions  to  surround  him.  He  was, 
to  use  his  own  subsequent  words,  in  a  “  complete  dream  ”  ; 
he  had  expected  to  meet  thirty  thousand  men,  when,  in 
reality,  there  were  nearly  seven  times  that  number  against 
him .  all  within  the  space  of  one  short  week,  Marmont 
had  crossed  the  Rhine  at  Frankfort ;  Bernadotte  at 
Wurzburg ;  Ney,  Lannes,  and  Murat  at  Kehl ;  Soult 
and  Davoust  at  Spires,  and  Napoleon  himself  at  Strass- 
burg.  44  Soldiers,  cried  the  latter  to  his  army,  44  your 
emperor  is  in  your  midst  !  You  are  now  the  vanguard 
of  the  grand  nation.” 

How  different  was  the  spirit  in  the  army  of  the  coalition  ! 
When  Mack  drew  his  forces  together  at  Ulm  everybody 
but  himself  saw  that  he  was  recklessly  perilling  their 
safety ;  and  the  next  in  command,  Archduke  Ferdinand  of 
Modena,  withdrew  with  twelve  battalions  in  disgust,  and 
made  his  way  through,  though  with  heavy  losses,  to 
Bohemia.  But  Mack  was  blinded  by  the  delusion  that 
the  rumored  landing  of  the  English  in  Boulogne,  the 
expected  joining  of  the  coalition  by  Prussia,  and  an 
imaginary  insurrection  in  Paris,  would  require  the  em¬ 
peror  s  presence,  and  that  Napoleon  was  even  now  beating 
a  retreat.  There  were  persistent  reports  at  the  Austrian 
court  that  the  44 star  of  the  tyrant  was  waning”;  that, 
after  all,  he  was  merely  a  stage-monarch ;  and  that 
adulation  and  luxury  had  weakened  his  powers.  The 
rude  awakening  from  the  44  complete  dream  ”  came  on  the 
20th  of  October,  1805,  when  Mack,  almost  immediately 
after  having  exhorted  his  troops  to  hold  out  to  the  last 
man,  surrendered  them  all,  to  the  number  of  twenty-three 

I  thousand,  without  striking  a  blow.  44  The  shame  that 
oppresses  us,”  wrote  an  Austrian  officer,  44  the  filth  that 
covers  us,  can  never  be  wiped  away  !  ”  It  made  no  differ- 


254 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  Gx^i.  iANY 

enoe  in  the  struggle  on  the  continent  that,  four  days 
later,  Nelson,  at  Trafalgar,  obliterated  the  sea  power  of 
France  for  a  generation  to  come. 

The  Treaty  As  Napoleon  swept  on,  accompanied  by  his  German 
of  Potsdam.  vassals,  —  and  making,  as  was  his  wont,  straight  for  the 
enemy’s  capital,  — the  Russians  and  the  remnant  of  the 
Austrians  withdrew  to  Moravia.  All  was  not  yet  lost,  for 
the  French  were  moving  farther  and  farther  from  their  i 
base  of  supplies ;  while,  for  the  allies,  reenforcements  were 
on  the  way  from  the  northeast,  and  there  was  every 
reason  to  hope  that  Prussia,  whose  armies  had  quickly 
been  mobilized,  would  now  definitely  declare  for  the 
coalition.  The  news  of  Bernadotte’s  march  through  the 
Prussian  territory  of  Ansbach,  by  which,  as  the  allies 
claimed,  Mack’s  surrender  was  effected,  had  roused  j 
Frederick  William  to  unwonted  energy,  and  he  is  said 
to  have  cried  out,  « I  will  have  nothing  more  to  do  with 
the  man  !  ”  —  meaning  Napoleon.  He  had  at  once  notified 
the  Czar  that  the  Russians  might  cross  Silesia  ;  within  ten 
days  after  Mack’s  capture  Alexander  had  come  to  Berlin, 
and  on  November  3  had  signed  the  Treaty  of  Potsdam, 
by  which  Prussia  agreed  to  throw  an  army  of  180,000 
men  into  the  field  should  Napoleon  not  agree,  within 
four  weeks,  to  relinquish  all  his  conquests  in  Holland, 
Switzerland,  and  Naples.  On  the  whole  transaction  the 
seal  of  sacredness  had  been  set  by  a  midnight  visit  of  the 
Czar,  the  king,  and  the  beautiful  Queen  Louise  to  the  last 
resting-place  of  Frederick  the  Great,  and  a  kiss  imprinted 
on  his  coffin. 

The  Napoleon,  meanwhile,  had  taken  Vienna  and  sent  off  her 

battle  of  works  of  art  to  enrich  his  collection  in  Paris ;  as  he 

Austerlitz.  advanCed  into  Moravia,  however,  the  position  of  affairs 
became  less  encouraging.  Every  day  that  passed  meant 
a  gain  to  the  allies,  a  loss  to  himself,  — a  fact  of  which 


THE  DOWNFALL  OF  PRUSSIA 


255 


' 

n 

Kutusoff,  the  Russian  general,  was  well  aware.  But  a 
rash  decision  of  the  Czar,  impelled,  it  is  said,  by  the  sight 
of  his  own  splendid  regiments  marching  in  review,  gave 
to  the  French  emperor  the  longed-for  chance  of  gaining 
what  proved  to  be  his  most  splendid  victory.  He  could 
not  believe  his  ears  when  the  report  reached  him  that  the 
enemy  had  left  a  strong  position  to  try  and  cut  him  off 
from  Vienna ;  one  who  was  with  him  reports  that,  trem¬ 
bling  with  joy  and  clapping  his  hands,  he  cried,  out  to 
those  around  him  :  “  That  is  a  wretched  move  !  They  are 
going  into  the  trap  !  They  are  giving  themselves  up  ! 

Before  to-morrow  evening  this  army  is  mine  !  ”  And 
after  the  battle  to  his  soldiers,  u  Soldiers,  I  am  satisfied 
with  you  !  ”  As  well  he  might  be,  for  the  losses  of  the 
allies  at  Austerlitz  were  twenty-six  thousand,  not  to  speak 
of  nearly  all  the  guns,  all  the  ammunition,  and  all  the 
baggage. 

A  few  days  before  this  battle  of  the  three  emperors,  The  mis- 
Haugwitz  had  arrived  in  Napoleon’s  camp  at  Briinn  with  sion  of 
the  demands  of  the  Prussian  king.  He  had  travelled  as  HauSwitz- 
slowly  as  possible,  he  allowed  Napoleon  to  dally  with  him 
and  send  him  from  pillar  to  post,  and  finally,  after  Aus¬ 
terlitz,  ended  up  a  course  of  the  most  incomprehensible 
behavior  by  concluding  a  treaty  of  alliance  instead  of 
presenting  an  ultimatum.  By  the  Treaty  of  Schonbrunn, 

Prussia  was  to  receive  Hanover,  and,  in  return,  to  cede 
the  remainder  of  Cleves,  the  fortress  of  Wesel  and  the 
principality  of  Neuchatel  to  France,  as  well  as  Ansbach  to 
Bavaria.  On  the  surface,  it  seems  incredible  that  any  man 
on  his  own  responsibility  should  have  dared  such  action  • 
as  that  of  Haugwitz  ;  still  more  incredible,  that  Frederick 
William  should  have  ratified  these  engagements  and  treated 
their  sponsor  with  respect  and  consideration.  But  under- 

j  neath  it  all,  as  a  recently  discovered  letter  has  proved, 


256 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  Peace 
of  Press- 
burg. 


The  Rhine 
confedera¬ 
tion  and 
the  end  of 
the  Holy 
Roman 
Empire. 


lay  the  bitter  fact  that  the  king’s  own  courage  had  given  , 
out  at  the  last  moment,  and  that  he  had  secretly  instructed 
Haugwitz  on  no  account  to  let  it  come  to  war  ! 

Truly,  with  all  sympathy  for  Prussia,  with  a  knowledge 
of  all  the  good  forces  that  were  even  now  slumbering 
within  her,  one  can  only  say  that  she  richly  deserved  her 
fate.  Now  that  time  has  cleared  the  mists  away  and  given 
us  a  larger  point  of  view,  it  seems  incomprehensible  that 
this  Hohenzollern  should  have  failed  so  utteily  to  recog¬ 
nize  where  his  true  interests  lay.  Even  after  Austerlitz 
there  were  enough  Russians  at  his  disposal  to  bring  the 
total  of  his  army  up  to  300,000  men.  But  instead  of 
fighting  France,  he  deliberately  agreed,  in  a  supplementary 
treaty  signed  at  Paris  with  Napoleon,  to  expose  himself  to 
a  war  with  England  for  the  sake  of  Hanover ;  and  then, 
as  a  climax  of  folly,  reduced  his  army  to  a  peace  footing  ! 
Austria,  in  consequence  of  Prussia’s  action,  was  driven  to 
sign  with  France  the  Peace  of  Pressburg  (December  26, 
1805),  by  which  she  was  divested  of  28,000  square  miles 
of  territory,  3,500,000  inhabitants,  and  14,000,000  guldens 
of  yearly  revenue.  On  the  east,  on  the  south,  and  on  the 
west  her  provinces  were  cut  from  her ;  and  the  man  who 
was  still  head  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  was  forced  to 
acknowledge  the  kingship  and  full  sovereignty  of  Na¬ 
poleon’s  satraps,  Wurtemberg  and  Bavaria.  These  par¬ 
venu  kings  now  set  the  crown  on  a  long  succession  of 
misdeeds,  by  forming,  with  fourteen  other  princes,  the 
Rhine  confederation  and  repudiating  the  jurisdiction  of 
the  empire.  At  the  Diet,  eight  envoys  handed  in  the 
declaration  that  their  masters  saw  fit,  “  commensurably 
with  their  dignity  and  the  purity  of  their  goals,”  to  re¬ 
nounce  allegiance  to  an  organization  that  had  practically 
ceased  to  exist,  and  to  place  themselves  under  the  protec¬ 
tion  of  the  great  monarch  “  whose  views  had  always  shown 


THE  DOWNFALL  OF  PRUSSIA 


257 


themselves  in  accord  with  the  true  interests  of  Germany.” 
As  for  h  rancis  II.,  one  of  the  least  sympathetic  scions  of 
an  unlovely  race,  he  took  occasion  to  write  to  Count  Met- 
ternich,  whom  he  sent  to  Paris  to  bargain  with  Napoleon, 
“  The  moment  for  resigning  the  imperial  dignity,  is  that 
when  the  advantages  which  accrue  from  it  for  my  mon¬ 
archy  shall  be  outweighed  by  the  disadvantages  that 
might  arise  from  its  further  retention.”  Metternich  is 
to  place  the  price  of  imperial  dignities  very  high  in  the 
market,  and  to  show  44  no  disinclination  to  the  resignation 
of  the  said  dignity,  but  rather  a  readiness  —  but  only  in 
return  for  great  benefits  to  be  acquired  by  my  monarchy.” 
“  With  such  sentiments,”  writes  the  scourging  pen  of 
Treitschke,  44  did  the  last  Homan-German  emperor  bid 
farewell  to  the  purple  of  the  Salians  and  the  Hohenstau- 
fens  !  ”  The  formal  abdication  was  drawn  up  on  the  6th 
of  August,  1806,  and  the  chief  ground  assigned  was  the 
defection  of  the  Rhine  princes. 

Swiftly  and  heavily  Prussia’s  retribution  for  all  the 
faults  and  errors  of  the  past  now  fell  upon  her.  Through 
Napoleon’s  intrigues,  she  failed  in  her  effort  to  found  a 
North  German  confederation  and  thus  collect  the  last 
Germans  under  her  banner  ;  while,  as  was  to  be  expected, 
her  dealings  with  regard  to  Hanover  involved  her  in  a 
war  with  England.  Hundreds  of  her  merchant  vessels 
were  captured  in  British  harbors  and  her  commerce  ruined. 
For  Hanover  she  had  suffered  all  this,  for  Hanover  she 
had  violated  every  precept  of  consistency  and  of  political 
probity.  And  now,  casually,  at  a  dinner,  her  envoy  learned 
from  the  British  envoy,  Lord  Yarmouth,  that  Napoleon, 
who  was  treating  for  peace  with  England,  had  offered,  as  a 
basis  of  negotiation,  the  retrocession  of  this  same  Hanover  ! 
The  English  negotiations  failed  and  Pitt’s  dying  prophecy, 
44  Roll  up  the  map  of  Europe,  it  will  not  be  needed  these 

VOL.  II  —  S 


Napoleon’s 
perfidy  with 
regard  to 
Hanover. 


258 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Enthusiasm 
for  the 
war. 


Unpre¬ 
paredness 
of  Prussia. 


ten  years !  ”  eventually  proved  true.  But  the  perfidy  of 
the  man  whom  he  considered  his  ally,  and  the  final  con¬ 
viction  that  Napoleon  really  intended  Prussia’s  ruin,  in¬ 
duced  Frederick  William  to  listen  to  the  war  party  at 
Berlin,  to  which  his  courageous  wife  and  even  Haugwitz 
belonged.  He  mobilized  his  forces,  entered  into  an  agree¬ 
ment  with  Russia  by  which  the  Czar  was  to  furnish  him 
with  70,000  men,  and,  finally,  sent  an  ultimatum  to  the 
effect  that  the  French  must  retire  entirely  from  Germany 
and  place  no  hindrance  in  the  way  of  the  projected  North 
German  confederation.  In  a  proclamation  to  his  people 
he  declared  that  he  was  taking  up  arms  to  free  unhappy 
Germany  from  the  yoke  under  which  she  was  languishing, 
for:  “over  and  above  all  treaties  nations  have  their  rights! 

The  war  was  sure  to  be  popular,  for  the  weight  of  Na¬ 
poleon’s  tyranny  was  beginning  to  be  widely  felt ;  shortly 
before,  he  had  again  shocked  all  Germans  by  the  execution 
of  Palm,  a  bookseller  of  Nuremberg,  whose  only  crime  was 
having  sold  a  patriotic  pamphlet  called  Germany  in  the 
Depths  of  her  Humiliation  —  the  most  revolutionary  advice 
in  which  seems  to  have  been,  “  lift  up  your  voices  and 
weep !  ”  It  has  been  said  of  this  murder  of  Palm,  that  its 
effect  on  the  people  at  large  was  like  that  of  the  Enghien 
tragedy  on  the  crowned  heads.  In  Berlin  there  had 
already  been  demonstrations ;  young  officers  had  sharpened 
their  swords  on  the  window-sill  of  the  I  rench  ambassador, 
and  had  joined  in  the  theatre  in  the  chorus  in  Schiller’s 
Wallenstein ,  “  Up,  comrades,  up  !  to  horse,  to  horse  !  ”  . 

But  a  campaign  on  which  the  very  existence  of  a  nation 
depended  should  have  been  inaugurated  with  more  care 
and  caution.  Frederick  William  III.  has  justly  been 
blamed  for  not  entering  the  war  before ;  now  he  entered 
it  too  soon.  Thousands  of  his  soldiers  had  been  granted 
leave  of  absence ;  whole  regiments  had  been  sent  back  to 


THE  DOWNFALL  OF  PRUSSIA  259 

Ij 

their  distant  garrisons;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  large 
French  forces  had  remained  stationed  in  South  Germany. 

And  the  condition  of  the  army  was  deplorable,  its  general 
spirit  unwarlike  to  the  last  degree.  The  chief  commands 
were  in  the  hands  of  self-satisfied  old  graybeards,  who  had 
done  good  service  in  the  time  of  Frederick  the  Great,  but 
had  since  grown  weak  and  pampered  on  account  of  the 
comforts  that  their  sinecures  offered.  It  would  be  hard 
to  imagine  a  more  baneful  arrangement  than  that  which 
allowed  officers  to  reap  advantage  from  issuing  leave  of 
absence  to  their  men  ;  the  sums  economized  from  food  and 

i  . 

maintenance  flowed  in  such  streams  into  the  pockets  of  the 
captains,  that  their  income  in  time  of  peace  was  double 
what  it  was  in  time  of  active  service.  The  forms  of  the 
past  had  survived,  but  not  the  spirit ;  even  on  the  march, 
the  most  promising  young  officers  were  held  down  to 
clerical  work  when  they  should  have  been  scouring  the 
country  for  information.  The  importance  attributed  to 
minor  matters,  to  the  length  of  the  pigtail,  to  the  manner 
of  giving  out  the  parole,  bordered  on  the  ridiculous  if  not 
on  the  insane.  Just  before  the  battle  of  Jena,  Frederick 
William  met  Captain  Boyen,  who  all  the  morning  had 
been  engaged  in  desperate  efforts  to  clear  an  obstructed 
road  for  the  troops,  and  sent  word  to  him  —  that  his  hair 
was  out  of  order. 

It  is  doubtful  if  too  much  blame  for  the  catastrophe  of  Folly  and 
his  country  can  be  thrown  on  the  shoulders  of  this  weak  weakness 
king.  His  lovable  personality,  his  perfect  uprightness,  of  tbe  kin 
his  martyr-like  attitude  in  misfortune,  the  final  triumph 
of  his  cause,  endeared  him  to  his  subjects  and  have  blunted 
the  pen  of  censorious  historians ;  yet,  as  head  of  a  nation 
rigidly  trained  for  nearly  a  century  to  look  to  its  king  for 
everything,  he  had  proved  a  most  lamentable  failure. 

At  each  critical  moment  he  wavered  like  a  broken  reed. 

i 


Blindness 
of  the 
Prussian 
officers. 


260  A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

His  own  last  ultimatum  to  Napoleon  is  a  marvel  of  feeble  j 
self-exculpation,  full  of  allusions  to  France’s  glory  and 
to  his  own  good  services  on  her  behalf.  “  I  was  the  first 
to  recognize  you,”  he  wrote.  “  I  have  been  insensible  to 
threats  as  well  as  to  promises  when  it  was  a  question  of 
making  me  false  to  our  good  relations.”  Sentimental 
reminiscences  at  a  moment  like  this  when  the  stake  was  , 
nothing  less  than  national  existence,  and  when  most  posi-  j 
tive  proofs  had  been  furnished  of  the  enemy’s  perfidy!  ,j 
Others  saw  what  Frederick  William  could  not  even  yet 
be  brought  to  see,  that  nothing  whatever  was  to  be  hoped 
for  from  this  man,  that  the  wheel  of  destruction  was  re¬ 
lentlessly  advancing,  that  the  sins  committed  ten  and  five  ? 
years  before  were  to  be  bitterly  atoned.  Ernst  Moritz 
Arndt,  the  inspired  prophet  of  liberty,  draws  a  frightful 
picture,  at  this  time,  of  the  ruin  to  come,  of  the  terrible 
destroyer  hurling  his  legions  from  the  ocean  to  the  Rhine, 
of  the  soil  stamped  by  the  feet  of  hundreds  of  thousands, 
of  the  plunder,  the  starvation,  the  shame:  “Unhappy 
princes,  could  you  suffer  more  than  you  now  suffer? 
Certainly  you  could  not  suffer  more  unworthily.”  And 
Jena  was  not  yet  fought,  Tilsit  not  yet  signed!  An  j 
incredible  blindness  prevailed  among  the  officers  of  the  ^ 
army  as  to  the  shortcomings  of  that  institution.  General 
Riichel  on  the  public  occasion  of  a  parade  declared  that 
Prussia  had  “several  commanders  equal  to  General  Bona¬ 
parte”;  Blucher,  even,  expressed  his  perfect  satisfaction 
with  the  present  condition  of  the  military  forces.  After 
the  campaign  had  already  begun,  a  certain  Captain  Lieb- 
haber  was  heard  to  say  at  mess :  “  As  yet  the  enemy  has 
taken  no  step  that  we  had  not  previously  prescribed  to 
him.  .  .  .  Napoleon  is  as  certainly  ours  as  though  we  had 
him  in  this  hat,”  whereupon  many  officers  rose  on  tiptoe 
and  looked  into  the  hat. 


THE  DOWNFALL  OF  PRUSSIA  261 

Of  all  Frederick  William’s  faults  and  imperfections 
none  proved  more  fatal  than  his  inability  to  recognize  and 
make  use  of  great  men.  He  clung  to  his  Beymes,  his 
Lombards,  and  his  Haug witzs  to  the  very  last  moment ; 
his  chief  military  adviser,  General  Kockeritz,  once  con¬ 
fided  to  General  Boyen  that  he  did  not  like  to  have  two 
opposing  parties  approach  him  on  a  matter  at  the  same 
time,  “for  they  always  know  enough  to  put  the  case  in 
such  a  form  that  I  cannot  tell  which  is  right!”  With 
the  Duke  of  Brunswick,  commander-in-chief  of  all  the 
forces  that  were  to  fight  against  Napoleon,  matters  were 
still  worse.  Brunswick  in  his  youth  had  been  a  brave 
leader,  fearless  of  danger.  Frederick  the  Great  had  once 
likened  him,  in  verse,  to  the  Turennes,  the  Weimars,  the 
Condes.  His  reputation  had  extended  beyond  Germany, 
and,  at  the  outbreak  of  the  French  Revolution,  the  Jacobins 
had  wished  him  for  their  own  commander.  His  achieve¬ 
ments,  indeed,  on  the  German  side  had,  as  we  have  seen, 
been  far  from  glorious.  He  was  still  brave  in  battle,  but 
weak  as  his  master  when  it  came  to  making  a  decision. 
When  the  army  started  out  in  September,  1806,  to  meet 
the  French  in  the  Weimar- Jena-Erfurt  region,  Frederick 
William  accompanied  it.  “  What  shall  we  call  headquar¬ 
ters,  royal  or  ducal?”  wrote  Scharnhorst,  the  only  thor¬ 
oughly  trained  soldier  of  them  all.  No  single  step  was 
taken  without  hours  of  polite  discussion — Frederick  Will¬ 
iam  and  Brunswick  both  shunning  responsibility  and  at 
last  taking  refuge  in  frequent  councils  of  war.  Had  it  not 
been  for  one  of  these  latter,  that  lasted  for  eight  priceless 
j  hours,  Prussia  might  still  have  escaped  the  catastrophe  of 
Jena.  There  was  no  concealment  of  the  dilemmas  of 
those  highest  in  authority.  Boyen  tells  of  a  door  left 
open,  so  that  a  room  full  of  young  officers  could  hear 
Brunswick  and  the  king  declare  their  total  ignorance  as 


The  king 
and  the 
Duke  of 
Brunswick. 


262 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Jena  and 
Auerstadt. 


to  the  enemy’s  position.  All  trust,  all  confidence,  in  such 
leadership  was  gone.  A  deputation  of  officers  appeared 
before  Kalckreuth  and  urged  him  to  save  what  was  still 

to  be  saved  and  himself  take  command. 

As  at  Ulm,  the  French  came  upon  their  enemy  utterly 
unawares  and  found  them  in  a  long,  straggling  line.  On 
one  and  the  same  day,  Hohenlohe  was  defeated  at  Jena, 
and  Brunswick  himself,  twelve  miles  north,  at  Auerstadt. 
Hohenlohe  succumbed  to  superior  numbers  and  to  his 
own  folly  in  camping  on  a  plain  without  attempting  to 
seize  the  adjoining  heights, —up  which,  torch  m  hand, 
Napoleon  himself  had  led  his  troops  under  cover  of  the 
night.  At  Auerstadt,  Brunswick’s  forces  actually  out¬ 
numbered  the  French  by  several  thousands ;  but  early  m 
the  fight  he  himself  was  blinded  and  mortally  wounded, 
and  could  no  longer  direct  the  battle.  The  other  generals 
were  ignorant  of  what  plan  of  operations  he  had  intended. 
Frederick  William,  though  present,  could  neither  make 
up  his  mind  to  take  command  himself,  nor  did  he  appoint 
another  general-in-chief.  The  different  divisions  of  the 
army  waited  in  vain  for  their  orders,  and  Kalckreuth’s 
sorely  needed  reserves  were  not  called  up.  Scharnhorst 
led  a  forlorn  hope,  and  almost  succeeded  in  saving  the 
day.  Forced  at  last  to  retreat,  he  drew  out  his  right 
wing  in  some  order ;  but  as  fate  would  have  it,  the  two 
simultaneously  defeated  armies  pursued  the  same  line  of 
retreat;  and  unexpectedly,  in  the  darkness  of  tne  night, 
came  upon  each  other.  All  discipline  was  at  an  end. 
Baggage,  artillery,  horses,  and  men,  all  were  involved  in 
one  horrible  moving  snarl.  The  king  himself,  with 
Blucher  at  his  side,  rode  for  fourteen  hours  in  momen¬ 
tary  danger  of  capture. 

The  worst  result  of  the  battles  of  Jena  and  Auerstadt 
was  the  sudden  revulsion  that  they  brought  about,  from 


THE  DOWNFALL  OF  PRUSSIA 


263 


the  most  arrogant  over-confidence  to  the  most  extreme 
despair  and  discouragement.  After  one  single  day  of 
battle,  all  power  of  resistance  was  at  an  end.  To  use  the 
language  of  Napoleon’s  own  twenty-second  bulletin,  the 
great  beautiful  army  of  the  Prussians  had  vanished  like 
an  autumn  mist  before  the  rising  of  the  sun.  But  most 
astonishing  of  all,  was  the  manner  in  which  one  fortress 
after  the  other,  hitherto  deemed  impregnable,  fell  like 
a  house  of  cards.  Two  days  after  the  battle  of  Jena, 
Erfurt,  with  eleven  hundred  men  and  great  stores  of  pro¬ 
visions,  capitulated ;  nine  days  later,  Spandau  followed 
suit ;  then  Stettin,  then  Kiistrin.  Great  hopes  had  been 
placed  on  Magdeburg,  in  which  was  stored  a  million 
pounds  of  gunpowder,  and  which  sheltered  twenty  gen¬ 
erals,  eight  hundred  officers,  and  twenty-two  thousand 
i  soldiers;  yet  this  great  fortress,  though  besieged  by  a 
force  less  in  numbers  than  its  own  garrison,  surrendered 
after  the  twelfth  shot.  The  blame  for  such  occurrences 
falls  almost  directly  upon  the  king,  in  whose  hands  had 
lain  the  appointment  of  the  chief  officers.  The  com¬ 
mandants  of  Magdeburg  and  of  Kiistrin  were  both  men 
who  had  previously  been  punished  for  cowardice  before 
the  enemy ;  while  the  commandant  of  Stettin  had  frankly 
told  Frederick  William  that  he  was  too  old  and  too  feeble 
for  the  position,  and  had  only  accepted  it  as  a  sort  of 
?  sinecure. 

Meanwhile,  Hohenlohe,  with  some  twelve  thousand  men, 
surrendered  at  Prenzlau,  in  the  Ukermark,  to  a  much  smaller 
force.  He  was  deceived  by  the  false  assertion  of.  Murat 
that  he  was  opposing  him  with  sixty-four  thousand  men. 
Bliicher,  York,  and  Scharnhorst,  who  had  intended  to  join 
Hohenlohe,  cut  their  way  through  to  Liibeck,  where,  after 
desperate  fighting,  and  after  food  and  amm  unition  had  come 
to  an  end,  they  were  taken  captive.  Boyen  had  been  seri- 


The  fall 
of  the 
fortresses. 


The  resist¬ 
ance  of 
Colberg. 


264 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Napoleon 
in  Berlin. 


ously  wounded.  Only  in  Silesia,  and  in  one  little  Baltic 
fortress,  was  there  any  thoroughly  successful  resistance 
west  of  the  Vistula;  when  the  commandant  of  Colberg, 
Lucadou,  spoke  of  surrender,  the  brave  old  sailor,  Nettel- 
beck,  defied  him  to  his  face,  and  organized  a  hand  of  citizen 
defenders.  The  country  around  was  flooded,  the  walls 
strengthened,  and  supplies  ordered  by  sea  from  England 
and  Sweden.  An  eloquent  letter  from  Nettelbeck  induced 
the  king  to  recall  Lucadou,  whose  place  was  given  to 
Gneisenau.  These  two  heroic  men,  Grneisenau  and  Nettel¬ 
beck,  played  well  into  each  other’s  hands,  and  each  has 
done  full  justice  to  the  merits  of  the  other;  each  was  tire¬ 
less  in  his  activity,  wonderful  in  his  courage  and  pa¬ 
triotism.  To  both  in  common  it  is  due  that  Colberg  held 
out  —  though,  after  superhuman  efforts,  on  the  very  point 
of  falling  —  until  peace  was  at  last  declared. 

Napoleon  had  so  well  appreciated  the  meaning  of  the 
victory  at  Jena  that,  only  a  few  hours  later,  he  imposed  a 
contribution  of  one  hundred  fifty-nine  million  francs  on  all 
the  Prussian  provinces  west  of  the  Vistula ;  within  a  week 
he  had  incorporated  those  to  the  left  of  the  Elbe  in  the 
French  empire.  He  himself  had  begun  a  triumphal  prog¬ 
ress  toward  Berlin;  while  Frederick  William  and  his 
court  fled  to  the  extreme  northeastern  part  of  Prussia. 
Baron  Stein,  who  for  a  short  time  had  been  minister  of 
finance,  managed  to  secure  the  money  boxes  of  the  state 
and  convey  them  to  a  place  of  safety  —  a  wise  precaution  if 
a  new  army  was  to  be  raised.  In  Berlin,  Napoleon  gave 
full  swing  to  the  dictates  of  his  thoroughly  vengeful 
nature.  On  the  walls  of  her  own  palace  he  wrote  insults 
against  Queen  Louise,  whom  he  considered  largely  respon¬ 
sible  for  Frederick  William’s  declaration  of  war ;  from  the 
grave  of  Frederick  the  Great  he  carried  off  the  scarf  and 
sword  and  presented  them  to  the  Invalided  in  Paris;  he 


THE  DOWNFALL  OF  PRUSSIA  265 

caused  the  obelisk  on  the  battlefield  of  Rossbach  to  be 
broken  in  pieces  and  thrown  in  the  dust;  the  figure  of 
\ictory  with  her  prancing  steeds  was  lowered  from  the 
top  of  the  Brandenburg  gate  and  relegated  for  the  next 
eight  years  to  a  shed  on  the  banks  of  the  Seine.  Down 
the  broad  avenue  Unter  den  Linden  was  driven  like  a  herd 
of  cattle  the  famous  gens  d'armes  regiment,  whose  officers 
had  been  the  gilded  youth  of  the  town,  had  engaged  in 
wild  notorious  escapades  like  that  summer  sleighride  over 
salted  roads,  or  that  chase  of  Catholic  priests  after  one 
disguised  as  Luther,  had  graced  the  salons  of  those  in¬ 
tellectual  Jewesses,  Rahel  and  Henriette  Herz.  It  was  to 
be  many  a  long  day  now  before  a  Prussian  officer  might 
dare  even  to  show  himself  upon  the  streets  in  his  uniform. 

The  frivolous,  self-conceited  Berliners  had  a  hard  lesson 
to  learn;  the  better-minded  among  them  had  to  struggle 
not  merely  with  misfortune,  but  also  with  shame,  treason, 
and  disgrace.  Frenchmen  themselves  turned  away  in 
disgust  fiom  the  cringing  fear  with  which  they  were 
met.  “Let  it  lie,”  said  one  of  them,  to  whom  had  been 
officiously  pointed  out  a  goodly  supply  of  timber;  “let  it 
lie,  that  your  king  may  have  something  on  which  to  hang 
you  rogues !  ”  Low-minded  men  were  found  who  were  will¬ 
ing  to  edit  the  newspapers  in  the  interests  of  the  French, 
and  to  cover  with  insults  the  Prussian  royal  house  ;  a 
considerable  number  of  Frederick  William’s  old  officials 
worked  quietly  on  under  the  new  regime.  Even  dis¬ 
tinguished  scholars  like  Johannes  Muller  and  the  philos¬ 
opher  Hegel  were  willing  to  bend  their  knee  to  the  hero 
of  the  age. 

For  a  while,  even  after  the  battle  of  Jena,  Frederick  Napoleon’s 
William  III.  had  retained  his  optimistic  view  of  Napo-  demands, 
leon  s  character.  On  the  day  following  that  event,  he 
had  sent  to  the  emperor  and  asked  for  a  truce  and  for 

r 


i 


k 


266 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Servility  of 
Saxony. 


conditions  of  peace ;  he  was  sure,  he  wrote,  that  a  man  so 
loyal,  with  such  nobility  of  soul,  would  demand  nothing 
against  his,  Frederick  William’s,  honor  and  the  security  of 
his  territories.  Napoleon  refused  the  truce,  and  his  con  l- 
tions  for  peace  kept  growing  more  severe  with  each  new 
capture  and  surrender.  After  the  fall  of  Stettin  he  de¬ 
manded,  not  merely  the  cession  of  all  Prussian  lands  west 
of  the  Elbe,  but  also  an  abandonment  of  the  alliance  with 
Russia,  and  an  agreement  in  certain  contingencies  to  go 
to  war  against  her  ;  after  the  disgraceful  capitulation  of 
Magdeburg,  nothing  would  satisfy  him  but  the  withdrawal 
of  the  last  remnants  of  the  Prussian  troops  beyond  the  Vis¬ 
tula,  and  the  abandonment  of  the  forts  that  still  stood  firm 
in  Silesia,  as  well  as  Thorn,  Danzig,  Graudenz,  and  Col- 
berg  A  treaty  to  this  effect  had  already  been  drawn  up, 
and  a  majority  of  the  council  called  to  debate  upon  the 
matter  at  Osterode  had  voted  to  ratify  it,  when  the  king, 
supported  by  Stein  and  Voss,  found  the  courage  of  des¬ 
peration  and  determined  to  fight  to  the  death.  ar  icu- 
larly  horrible  to  him  had  been  the  thought  of  abandoning 
this  faithful  Russian  ally,  this  Czar  to  whom  he  felt 
bound  by  the  most  intimate  ties  of  personal  friendship. 

Napoleon  had  experienced  in  this  campaign  the  value 
of  the  Rhenish  princes  as  allies ;  their  soldiers  had  fought 
as  bravely  as  the  French  themselves,  and  are  said  to  have 
acted  with  even  greater  brutality.  Their  confederation 
was  now  joined  by  Saxony,  which  was  forever  estrange 
from  Prussia  by  the  promise  of  Prussian  land  and  the 
o-ift  of  a  royal  crown.  The  new  king,  Frederick  Augus¬ 
tus,  who,  shortly  before,  had  been  treating  with  Frederick 
William  III.  for  entry  into  the  proposed  North  German 
confederation,  now  outdid  even  Bavaria  and  Wurtem- 
berg  in  cheerful  submissiveness.  While  Prussia  was  m 
the  last  agonies,  a  great  festival  was  held  in  Leipzig,  w  eie 


THE  DOWNFALL  OF  PRUSSIA 


267 


i 


| 

| 

i 


I 

| 

« 

i 

| 

; 

! 


the  sun,  the  emblem  that  Napoleon  had.  borrowed  from 
Louis  XIV.,  wati  the  most  prominent  decoration.  An 
inscription  over  the  anatomical  room  in  the  university 
proclaimed  that  “  The  dead,  too,  cry  long  life  !  ”  “  Saved 

is  the  fatherland  ”  was  the  favorite  refrain.  In  Poland, 
too,  Napoleon  fostered  a  revolt,  causing  weapons  to  be 
distributed  among  the  insurgents  and  expressing  his  deep 
interest  in  their  aims. 

Prussia  s  one  friend,  drawn  closer  by  these  very  Po-  The  battle 
lish  troubles,  was  the  handsome,  blue-eyed  young  Czar  °t  Eylau. 
Alexander ;  his  forces  under  Benningsen  joined  the  last  re¬ 
maining  Piussian  corps,  that  of  Lestocq,  in  which  Scharn- 
horst  was  the  leading  spirit ;  and  together  they  prepared 
for  Napoleon  the  first  check  that  he  had  ever  experienced 
in  his  victorious  career.  The  battle  of  Eylau  was  bloody 
in  the  extreme,  —  some  forty  thousand  men  are  said  to 
have  fallen  in  all,  —  and,  though  not  entirely  defeated, 
the  French  were  forced  to  retire  into  winter  quarters. 

The  emperor  made  overtures  of  peace  which  Frederick 
William  in  turn  refused.  The  prospects  seemed  brighter, 
though  still  far  from  encouraging.  The  Czar  treated 
the  Prussian  king  with  the  utmost  friendliness,  and 


once  exclaimed  fervently,  “Is  it  not  true,  neither  of 
us  two  shall  fall  alone  ?  ”  In  a  treaty  signed  at  Bar- 
tenstein,  April  26,  1807,  the  two  powers  bound  them¬ 


selves  not  to  lay  down  their  arms  until  Germany  should 
have  been  freed  and  the  French  driven  back  beyond  the 
Rhine. 

But  the  battle  of  Friedland  —  entered  into  reluctantly  by  Friedland. 
Benningsen  after  months  of  delay,  during  which  Napoleon 
was  reenforcing  his  army  —  proved  a  second  Austerlitz ; 
without  even  notifying  his  ally,  the  frightened  Alexander 


accepted  his  defeat  as  final,  and  promised  to  sign  a  truce. 
Fiom  an  enemy  of  Napoleon,  he  became  his  warm  and 


The  three 
monarchs 
at  Tilsit. 


The  Treaty 
of  Tilsit. 


208  A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  <  I  ANY 

affectionate  friend,  revelling  in  the  tght  of  sharing 

with  him  the  rule  of  the  Western  w  • 

The  final  doom  of  Prussia  was  spol  it  Tilsit,  where 

interviews  between  N apoleon  and  his  tw  J al  antagoms  s 
were  held  in  the  most  romantic  of  trysting  places,  a 
pavilion  erected  on  a  raft  in  the  river  Niemen. 
whole  scene  was  well  calculated  to  work  on  the  impres¬ 
sionable  spirit  of  the  young  Czar ;  he  was  hired  not  torn 
from  his  loyalty  to  Frederick  William.  Napoleon  made 
it  appear,  and  indeed  it  was  true,  that  only  as  a  favor, 
and  out  of  regard  for  the  emperor  of  all  the  Russias,  were 
any  of  his  territories  at  all  to  be  returned  to  the  Prussian 
king;  the  latter  was  not  called  in  until  after  two  days 
when  he  was  treated  with  contempt  and  covered  with 
reproaches.  Frederick  William  had  spared  himself  no 
personal  humiliation  that  could  better  the  terms  for  his 
country  ;  he  had  even  induced  the  beautiful  queen  to  pay 
her  humble  respects  to  the  man  whom  she  regarded  as  the 
incarnation  of  the  devil.  She  was  treated  politely,  and 
returned  under  the  impression  that  her  visit  had  done 
some  good  ;  but,  as  Napoleon  himself  later  wrote,  her 
entreaties,  slid  off  him  like  water  from  oiled  cloth. 

In  the  formal  document  of  the  Peace  of  Tilsit  the  clause 
regarding  the  favor  to  the  Czar  was  inserted  —  a  wanton 
insult  such  as  is  rarely  to  be  found  in  a  great  treaty. 
But,  worse  still,  Alexander  did  not  scruple  to  accept  part 
of  the  spoils,  the  Polish-Prussian  district  of  Bialystok. 
An  English  cartoon  that  is  said  to  have  been  muc 
enioyed  in  Leipzig,  and  that  well  characterizes  the  situa¬ 
tion,  shows  “  Bony  ”  and  the  Czar  embracing  so  violently 
that  the  raft  takes  to  rocking  and  throws  Frederick 

William  into  the  water.  . 

The  poor  Prussian  king  lost  all  the  districts  west  of  e 

Elbe,  and  almost  all  that  had  been  acquired  from  the  last 


THE  DOWNFALL  OF  PRUSSIA 


269 


two  Polish  partitions,  not  to  speak  of  isolated  provinces 
like  Baireuth  and  East  Friesland.  In  actual  square  miles, 
as  well  as  in  population,  there  was  taken  away  from  him 
more  than  half  of  his  possessions.  These  went  to  form 
the.  kingdom  of  Westphalia  for  Jerome  Bonaparte,  and 
the  duchy  of  Warsaw  for  the  faithful  king  of  Saxony. 

What  was  left  was  spread  out  in  the  form  of  three 
clover  leaves,  at  the  mercy  of  every  enemy ;  while  for 
h  rederick  Augustus  there  was  reserved  in  addition  a 
right  of  way,  a  via  regis,  straight  across  Silesia. 

Forced  to  accept  this  complete  maiming  and  mutilation  The  lost 
of  his  fatherland,  Frederick  William,  in  a  formal  procla-  Provinces. 
mation,  released  his  lost  subjects  from  their  allegiance. 

“  That  which  centuries  and  worthy  forefathers,”  he  wrote, 

“that  which  treaties,  love,  and  confidence  once  bound 
together,  must  now  be  sundered.  Fate  commands,  the 
father  parts  from  his  children ;  no  fate,  no  power,  can 
tear  your  memory  from  the  hearts  of  me  and  mine.” 

The  peasants  of  the  county  of  Mark  wrote  back  in  their 
coarse  dialect :  “  Our  hearts  almost  broke  when  we  read 
your  message  of  farewell;  so  truly  as  we  are  alive  it  is 
not  your  fault !  ” 

i 


A 


CHAPTER  VII 


The  realiza¬ 
tion  of  the 
truth  in 
Prussia. 


"\ 

THE  REGENERATION  OF  PRUSSIA  AND  THE  WAR  OF 

LIBERATION 

Literature  :  Same  as  for  previous  chapter. 

The  unparalleled  misfortunes  which  had  fallen  upon 
Prussia,  paired  as  they  were  with  shame,  cowardice,  and 
dishonor,  had  worked  at  least  one  salutary  result :  the 
eyes  of  the  king  and  of  those  around  him  were  opened, 
the  era  of  complacency  and  self-satisfaction  was  at  an  end. 
Soon  after  the  events  at  Tilsit,  Queen  Louise  wrote  to  her 
father  that  what  had  happened  had  been  inevitable,  that 
the  old  order  of  things  had  outlived  itself  and  crumbled 
of  its  own  weight.  “We  have  gone  to  sleep,”  she  de¬ 
clared,  “  on  the  laurels  of  Frederick  the  Great,  the  lord  of 
his  age,  the  creator  of  a  new  era.  With  that  era  we  have 
not  progressed,  therefore  it  has  outdistanced  us.  From 
Napoleon  we  can  learn  much,  and  what  he  has  accom¬ 
plished  will  not  be  lost.  It  would  be  blasphemy  to  say, 
‘  God  be  with  him,’  but  evidently  he  is  a  tool  in  the  hand 
of  the  Almighty  with  which  to  bury  what  is  old  and  life¬ 
less,  closely  as  it  may  be  welded  with  the  things  around  us.” 

So  firmly  was  reverence  for  monarchical  rule  still  grafted 
on  the  Prussian  people  that  reform  without  the  king’s 
assistance  would  have  been  impossible  ;  of  the  greatest 
importance  it  was,  therefore,  that  Frederick  William  took 
up  the  work  bravely  and  conscientiously.  He  could  not, 
indeed,  entirely  conquer  his  ingrained  faults  of  character; 
his  indecision,  his  bluntness  of  perception,  were  still  to 

270 


THE  REGENERATION  OF  PRUSSIA 


271 


drive  the  best  of  his  advisers  almost  to  despair ;  the  state, 
before  it  could  rise,  was  to  sink  to  even  lower  depths. 
But,  all  the  same,  the  king  dimly  saw  the  right  path ;  and 
he  held  to  it  until  his  good  fortune,  finally,  led  him  into 
the  open. 

The  fate  of  all  Germany  hung  on  this  regeneration  of 
Prussia:  low  as  that  power  had  sunk,  there  was  no  other 
to  assume  the  leadership.  Austria,  indeed,  under  the 
guidance  of  Stadion,  was  to  make  the  attempt;  and  the 
year  180 y  waTm^many  wayTto  prove  the  most  brilliant  in 
her  whole  history.  But  she  was  to  fail  after  staking  her 
all,  and  her  collapse  was  to  be  final.  The  kingdoms  of 
Bavaria,  Wiirtemberg,  and  Saxony,  and  the  grand  duchy 
of  Baden,  were  utterly  lacking  in  national  patriotism; 
they  continued  to  bask  in  the  sunshine  of  Napoleon’s 
favor  until  the  storm-clouds  rolled  up  and  forced  them 
to  ignominiously  run  elsewhere  for  shelter. 

One  of  Frederick  William’s  most  praiseworthy  acts  was 
to  send  for  a  man  jvhom,  just  before  Tilsit,  he  had  loaded 
with  reproaches  Tmd  dismissed  from  office  for  having  re¬ 
fused  to  compromise  in  any  way  with  the  old  evils  of  cab¬ 
inet  government.  Baron  Stein  —  one  of  the  last  remaining 
free  knights  of  the  empire,  with  estates  and  a  ruined  castle 
on  the  Rhine  - —  had  been  a  trusted  servant  of  Frederick  the 
Great,  and,  in  1804,  at  the  age  of  forty-seven,  had  become 
minister  of  trade  and  commerce.  A  stern,  terrible,  yet  very 
just  official,  he  had  never  learned  to  cringe  to  royalty,  and 
felt  himself  fully  the  equal  of  any  of  the  petty  princes. 
Better  than  most  men  he  knew  the  evils  of  divided  rule; 
from  the  bridge  over  the  Lahn,  near  his  own  home,  he 
could  look  into  the  territories  of  eight  different  potentates. 
His  own  political  views  had  become  broad,  liberal,  and 
essentially  national.  “  I  have  but  one  fatherland,”  he 
once  wrote,  “which  is  called  Germany.  .  .  .  With  my 


Prussia  still 
the  natural 
leader. 


Baron 

Stein. 


272 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


whole  heart  I  am  devoted  to  it,  and  not  to  any  of  its 

parts.”  . 

Ruthlessly  outspoken  where  he  scented  evil,  Stem  had 

doubtless  gone  too  far  in  his  denunciation  of  the  king  s 
favored  councillors.  Immediately  after  J ena,  he  had  drawn 
up  a  memoir  which  was  laid  before  the  queen,  and  in  which 
those  in  power  were  savagely  and  relentlessly  criticised. 
Beyme  was  treated  more  leniently  than  the  others,  but 
was  spoken  of  as  totally  lacking  in  the  knowledge  requi¬ 
site  for  his  position.  Lombard  was  called  a  French 
poetaster,  who  idled  away  his  time  in  play  and  debauchery 
with  empty-headed  people.  Haugwitz’s  life  was  declared 
to  have  been  an  unbroken  series  of  disorders  and  corrup¬ 
tions,  that  of  a  shameless  liar  and  enfeebled  roue.  Soon 
afterward,  Stein  had  joined  with  the  king’s  own  brothers 
in  a  new  remonstrance,  which  accused  the  cabinet  of  play¬ 
ing  into  Napoleon’s  hands;  but,  when  Frederick  William 
had  tried  to  compromise  and  to  retain  both  Stein  and 
Beyme,  a  misunderstanding  had  arisen  which  caused  the 
king’s  wrath  to  completely  boil  over,  and  led  him  to  write 
his  opinion,  as  he  expressed  it,  in  plain  German.  Fie 
drew  the  pen,  indeed,  through  certain  passages  of  the 
letter  relating  to  possible  imprisonment ;  but  he  had  used 
the  words  insolent,  obstinate,  refractory,  and  disobedient, 
and  when  Stein  wrote  back  that  a  man  with  all  those 
blemishes  was  not  likely  to  be  of  much  service  to  the 
state,  he  had  received  answer,  “  Baron  Stein  has  passed 


judgment  on  himself.” 

The  matter  Now,  at  the  king’s  call,  acknowledged  as  the  only  man 
of  the  who  could  save  the  state,  Stein  came  without  hesitation  — 
Prussian  disdaining  to  make  conditions  like  Wallenstein  of  old  or 
indemnity.  uke  Hardenberg  to  come.  He  had  a  most  thankless 

task  to  perform,  and  he  himself  did  not  as  yet  know  the 
worst.  Never  was  a  state  to  be  so  badgered  and  tortured 


THE  REGENERATION  OF  PRUSSIA 


273 


as  Prussia  during  the  next  two  years.  The  amount  of 
the  indemnity  had  not  been  fixed  at  Tilsit;  Daru,  Na¬ 
poleon’s  representative  in  Berlin,  had  mentioned  one  hun¬ 
dred  million  francs,  which  Frederick  William  had  declared 
it  a  physical  impossibility  to  pay.  A  month  later,  Napoleon 
demanded,  not  merely  the  original  hundred  million,  but 
also  a  sum  equivalent  to  all  the  state  revenues  for  the 
eight  months  preceding  the  peace.  The  negotiations  on 
this  matter,  as  well  as  on  the  manner  of  payment,  went  on 
until  September  8,  1808,  when  a  supplementary  treaty 
was  signed  at  Paris.  The  exhausted  land  in  the  mean¬ 
time —  the  revenues  of  which  for  1808  were  386,000  thalers, 
the  necessary  expenditures  2,200,000 — had  been  forced  to 
submit  to  the  presence  of  160,000  Frenchmen,  and  had 
been  torn  by  doubts  whether  it  would  not  have  to  sacri¬ 
fice  Silesia,  or  cede  to  France  the  royal  domains.  Extor¬ 
tionate  charges  of  every  kind  had  been  trumped  up  and 
sources  of  revenue  sequestered ;  Napoleon  had  even  seized 
a  fund  set  aside  for  the  support  of  widows  and  orphans  — 
which  act  greatly  incensed  against  him  the  women  of  the 
land.  More  than  a  billion  francs  in  all  flowed  into  the 
French  treasury,  and  many  a  bitter  experience  was  thrown 
into  the  scale.  Prince  William,  the  brother  of  the  king, 
felt  obliged  to  appear  in  Paris  to  haggle  for  better  terms. 
He  offered  himself  as  hostage  if  only  the  troops  might  be 
removed:  “  Very  noble,  but  impossible,”  was  Napoleon’s 
reply.  A  proffered  alliance  was  scorned  until  full  pay¬ 
ment  should  have  been  made.  To  all  complaints  the 
emperor  invariably  answered,  “The  king  has  money 
enough,  why  does  he  need  an  army  when  no  one  is  at 
war  with  him  ?  ” 

The  Paris  Treaty  was  even  more  galling  than  the  forced 
agreement  at  Tilsit.  The  amount  of  the  indemnity  EaTd 
again  been  increased.;  the  fortresses  of  Glogau,  Kiistnn, 


The  Treaty 
of  Paris. 


274  A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

and  Stettin  were  still  to  be  held  byjfrench  garrisons ; 
rights  of  way  were  to  be  granted  in  all  directions  ;~for  the 
next  ten  years  the  Prussian  army  was  not  to  number  more 
than  fortv-two  thousand  menTahd,  in  case  of  a  war  with 
Austriarsixteen  thousand  men  were  to  fight  on  the  side  of 
the  French.  Frederick  William  would  never  have  rati¬ 
fied  such  engagements  had  there  been  the  least  hope  of  , 
support  from  the  Czar,  who  might  well  have  protested 
against  this  aggravation  of  the  Peace  of  Tilsit.  But 
Alexander,  although  at  this  time  he  visited  the  royal  pair 
in  Konigsberg,  on  his  way  to  the  brilliant  congress  at 
Erfurt,  was  fast  in  the  toils  dL-Napoleon,  whose  favor  he 
needed  in  Tns  designs  on  the  Danubian  principalities.  He 
promised  to  do  what  he  could  for  his  luckless  friends,  but 
Napoleon  at  his  only  sincere  advice  was  submission.  In  Erfurt,  Na- 
Erfurt.  poleon  received  the  Czar  with  the  utmost  magnificence ; 

though  he  did  not  grant  his  desires,  and  more  than  once 
offended  him  by  a  total  want  of  tact  as  when,  for  in¬ 
stance,  he  invited  Prince  William  of  Prussia  to  join  in  a 
hare-hunt  on  the  battlefield  of  J ena,  or  again,  when  he 
decorated  with  the  Cross  of  the  Legion  of  Honor  soldiers 
who  had  especially  distinguished  themselves  against  the 
Russians.  Doubtless  Napoleon’s  real  motive  at  Erfurt  was 
to  show  himself  in  all  his  magnificence  as  the  equal  of  the 
Czar ;  and  for  that  reason  he  summoned  his  German  satel¬ 
lites,  without,  however;  granting  them  a  voice  in  the  serious 
deliberations.  The  actor  Talma  could  boast  that  he  had 
played  to  a  parterre  of  kings,  though  very  new  and  very 
timid  and  very  badly  treated  kings  :  “  Taisez-vous  ce  riest 
qu’un  roi”  said  the  master  of  ceremonies  to  the  chief 
trumpeter,  when  the  latter  was  about  to  strike  up  in 
honor  of  one  of  them.  The  princes  of  the  realm  of  lit¬ 
erature  fared  better.  “You  are  a  man,”  Napoleon  said 
to  Goethe,  with  whom  he  talked  about  the  sorrows  of 


1  !  ' 


ll 

IV 

THE  REGENERATION  OF  PRUSSIA  275 

Werther,  and  whom  he  requested  to  write  a  tragedy  on 
the  theme  of  how  happy  Caesar  would  have  made  his 
people  if  they  had  only  given  him  time.  Wieland,  too, 
was  urged  to  implant  in  the  public  mind  a  more  favorable 
opinion  of  the  Roman  emperors.  As  for  the  Czar  Alex- 
andei,  all  that  he  accomplished  for  the  Prussian  king  was 
to  gain  a  rebate  of  twenty  million  thalers  from  the  total 
of  the  indemnity,  half  of  which  Napoleon  made  up  by 
charging  four  per  cent  interest  on  what  remained. 

Meanwhile  the  great  reforms  in  Prussia  were  well 
under  way;  they  were  to  fall  into  four  great  categories: 
social  .reforms,  administrative  reforms,  reforms  in  the  army, 
and  refo™s.iiyjpubIic}entiment.  What  the  French  Revo¬ 
lution  had  done  by  force  and  by  shedding  rivers  of  blood, 
was  now  to  be  accomplished  by  the  magic  of  strong  men’s 
names  and  the  issuing  of  a  few  edicts.  Feudal  tyranny 
was  to  be  done  away  with,  the  spirit  _  of  caste  exorcised, 
local  self-government  introduced-,  the  army  to  be  cleansed 
and  rejuvenated ;  a  wave  of  patfiofism,  finally,  was  to  be 
aroused,  that  would  sweep  away  all  the  sins  and  errors  of 
the  past. 

Immediately  on  receiving  his  summons,  Baron  Stein  had 
hastened  to  Memel,  where,  to  quote  his  own  words,  he  had 
found  the  king  “deeply  depress  3d,  believing  himself  pur¬ 
sued  by  an  inexorable  fate,  and  thinking  of  abdication.” 
The  queen  was  “  gentle  and  melancholy,  full  of  anxiety 
out  also  of  hope.”  Stein  soon  discovered  that  his  own 
position  was  as  nearly  that  of  a  dictator  as  was  possible 
ander  a  monarchical  form  of  government.  Yet  he  did 
aot  stand  alone,  for  ready  to  help\him  was  a  devoted  band 
)f  earnest,  talented,  and  progressive  men,  who  had  come 
;o  the  front  in  this  time  of  dire  need.  Strangely  enough, 
ilmost  all  of  them,  like  himself,  had  been  born  and  brought 
ap  outside  of  Prussian  territory :  Scharnhorst  and  Har- 


Stein  and 
his  fellow- 
reformers. 


276 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  eman¬ 
cipation  of 
the  Prus¬ 
sian  serfs. 


denberg  were  Hanoverians,  Blucher  a  Meeklenburger, 
Aurdt-  from  the  island  of  Rugen,  Gneisenau  and  Fichte 
from  Saxony,  the  gentle,  scholarly  Niebuhr_aJDane.  The 
latter,  together  with  Schon,  Stagemann,  and  Altenstem, 
was  a  member  of  what  is  known  as  the  Immediate 
Commission,  in  which,  with  Hardenberg’s  aid,  there  had 
already  been  worked  out  a  scheme  for  an  entire  change 
in  social  relationships  and  in  the  manner  of  landholding 
in  East  Prussia.  Within  a  week  after  his  arrival,  Stem 
applied  this  to  all  Prussian  territory,  and  published  his 

famous  emancipating  edict. 

Difficult  as  it  is  to  realize,  up  to  this  moment  two-thirds 
of  the  population  of  Prussia  had  consisted  of  unfree  per¬ 
sons,— not  slaves  in  the  full  sense  because  protected  by 
law  from  many  acts  of  oppression,  yet  unable  to  leave 
their  homes  of  their  own  free  will,  and  bound  to  personal, 
often  menial,  services.  The  evils  of  the  system  had  long 
been  apparent,  but  Frederick  the  Great,  as  well  as  his 
successors,  for  fear  of  disorganizing  the  army,  had  shrunk 
from  violent  interference.  Now,  by  the  edict  of  October  9, 
1807,  which  was  recognized  at  the  time  as  comparing  in 
importance  with  Magna  Charta  and  the  Habeas  Corpus  Act, 
all  this  was  changed:  “From  Martinmas,  1810,  ceases 
all  villainage  in  our  entire  states.  From  Martinmas, 
1810,  there  shall  be  only  free  persons,  as  this  is  already 
the  case  upon  the  domains  in  all  our  provinces;  free 
persons,  however,  still  subject,  as  a  matter  of  course,  to 
all  the  obligations  which  bind  them  as  free  persons  by 
virtue  of  the  possession  of  an  estate  or  by  virtue  of  a 
special  contract.” 

Other  paragraphs  of  the  edict,  those  relating  to  freedom 
of  exchange  in  land,  and  to  free  choice  of  occupation,  are 
almost  equally  important,  and  aided  equally  in  trans¬ 
forming  a  ground-down  nation  into  one  of  joyous  patriots. 


THE  REGENERATION  OF  PRUSSIA  277 

Every  pressure  had  hitherto  been  brought  to  bear  that 
could  keep  a  man  in  the  station  of  life  to  which  he  had 
been  born.  It  was  against  the  law  for  a  noble  to  become 
a  citizen,  or  to  hold  citizen  or  peasant  lands ;  equally 
against  the  law  for  a  peasant  or  citizen  to  purchase  or 
assume  mortgages  on  the  estates  of  nobles.  As  a  con¬ 
sequence,  bankrupt  nobles  had  almost  no  market  for  their 
lands,  and  could  raise  no  capital  with  which  to  cultivate 
them.  Forbidden  to  engage  in  trade,  their  only  alternative, 
their  only  hope,  was  in  the  capricious  bounty  of  their 
I  sovereign. 

It  betokened  indeed  a  great  social  revolution  when 
now,  in  the  king’s  name,  Stein  declared,  “  Every  inhabit¬ 
ant  of  our  states  is  competent,  without  any  limitation  on 
the  part  of  the  state,  to  possess,  either  as  property  or 
pledge,  landed  estates  of  every  kind  ”  ;  and  again,  “  Every 
noble  is  henceforth  permitted,  without  any  derogation 
from  his  position,  to  exercise  citizen  occupations ;  and 
every  citizen  or  peasant  is  allowed  to  pass  from  the 
peasant  into  the  citizen  class,  or  from  the  citizen  into  the 
peasant  class.”  An  ordinance  concerning  the  cities,  a  few 
months  later,  bestowed  practical  self-government,  with 
merely  a  right  of  oversight  reserved  for  the  crown. 

Such  radical  changes  as  these  presupposed  and  rendered 
absolutely  necessary  corresponding  changes  in  the  whole 
military  system ;  and  here  Scharnhorst,  as  head  of  a  re¬ 
organization  committee,  played,  and  with  equal  success, 
the  part  of  Stein.  The  same  object  was  kept  constantly 
in  view  :  the  army  was  to  consist  no  longer  of  slaves  kept 
in  order  by  fear,  but  of  devoted,  enthusiastic  patriots ; 
it  was  to  be  the  “  uniting  point  of  all  the  moral  and 
physical  powers  of  all  the  citizens  of  the  state.”  First, 
a  signal  example  was  to  be  made  of  all  who  had  been 
to  blame  for  the  recent  disasters,  then  a  thorough  inquiry 


Removal  of 
class  and 
property- 
distinctions. 


The  char¬ 
acter  of 
Scharn¬ 
horst. 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Gneisenau. 


instituted  into  the  causes  of  weakness  and  inefficiency,— 
and  the  proper  remedies  applied. 

Both  Stein  and  Scharnhorst  were  fortunate  in  having  a 
definite  end  for  their  reforms  in  view.  The  land  was  to  be 
liberated  as  soon  as  possible  from  under  the  heel  of  the 
oppressor.  In  everything  else  indeed,  save  in  their  devo¬ 
tion  to  a  common  cause,  the  men  were  as  different  as  pos¬ 
sible  :  Stein,  of  commanding  presence  and  aristocratic 
ways,  sudden,  impulsive,  fearless  of  consequences  ;  Scharn¬ 
horst,  unmilitary,  almost  slovenly  in  appearance,  with  no 
objection  to  munching  his  evening  meal  in  the  streets  or 
parks  of  Hanover,  yet,  by  virtue  of  necessity  an  ideal  con¬ 
spirator,  with  as  many  folds  in  his  conscience,  Treitschke 
has  said,  as  wrinkles  on  his  simple  face.  He  became, 
eventually,  a  master  in  the  art  of  throwing  people  off  the 
scent,  and  reminded  his  contemporaries  of  that  William  of 
Orange  who  earned  the  name  of  the  Silent  by  dissimulat¬ 
ing  his  knowledge  of  the  devilish  plots  of  the  Spanish  king. 
So  simple  was  his  manner  that  even  the  king  was  at  ease 
with  him,  a  distinction  of  which  no  other  really  great  man 
could  ever  boast. 

Associated  with  Scharnhorst  in  the  work  of  reforming 
the  army  were  Gneisenau,  Boyen,  Grolman,  and  Clause- 
witz, — the  first-named  of  whom  had  offered  the  only  heroic 
and  successful  resistance  of  the  campaign.  His  defence  of 
Colberg  had  been  of  far  more  than  momentary  importance ; 
he  had  kept  open  to  the  last  the  only  means  of  communi¬ 
cation  by  sea  with  England  and  with  Sweden ;  he  was  the 
first  to  make  systematic  use  of  the  weapon  that  was  to 
overthrow  Napoleon  —  a  citizen  army  with  courage  to  fight 
to  the  death.  His  methods  in  Colberg  had  been  counter 
to  all  military  precedent ;  he,  the  head  of  a  besieged 
garrison,  had  been  the  constant  aggressor,  not  confining 
himself  to  protecting  his  own  walls,  but  throwing  up 


j 


THE  REGENERATION  OF  PRUSSIA  279 

in  the  open  field  earthworks  that  took  the  enemy  many 
weeks  to  storm.  These  doings  had  been  watched  with 
breathless  interest  throughout  Prussia ;  and  Gneisenau  was 
already  the  hero  of  the  hour  when  he  was  called  to  act 
on  the  new  committee.  Boyen,  too,  was  a  man  of  great 
aoility,  and  was  later  to  become  famous  as  the  founder  of 
the  modern  Prussian  army  organization. 

These  men  went  about  their  task  with  an  inspired  zeal 
that  was  to  recoil  before  no  personal  considerations  what¬ 
ever.  An  investigation  was  begun  into  all  the  surrenders 
that  had  taken  place,  either  in  the  field  or  behind  the  walls 
of  fortresses.  In  order  to  find  a  severe  enough  punish¬ 
ment  recourse  was  had  to  the  statute  of  the  Great  Elector: 
“  When  a  fortress  is  given  up  to  the  enemy  without  ex¬ 
treme  necessity,  its  governors  and  commandants  shall  be 
punished  with  death ;  and  seven  officers  were  condemned 
to  the  severest  penalty  of  the  law.  The  king  pardoned 
them,  indeed,  doubtless  realizing  how  much  of  the  unreadi¬ 
ness  of  the  fortresses  was  his  own  work,  and  how  often  he 
had  implied  to  the  old  generals  that  their  positions  would 
be  sinecures.  In  general,  for  the  future,  the  burden  of 
proof  was  to  rest  with  the  officers ;  they  might  receive  no 
position,  enjoy  no  pension,  without  bringing  testimony  as 
to  past  good  conduct.  Age  and  incapacity  were  not 
spared.  Here  the  gentle  Scharnhorst  was  stern  and  im¬ 
placable:  of  the  143  generals  belonging  to  the  army  in  1806, 
but  two  served  seven  years  later  in  the  war  of  liberation. 

The  old  life  of  ease  for  the  officer  had  become  a  thing 
of  the  past.  He  might  no  longer  take  with  him  from  one 
to  five  pack-horses  to  carry  his  tent,  his  bed,  his  table,  his 
chair,  and  a  hundred  other  luxuries ;  of  the  thirty-two 
thousand  extra  horses  five-sixths  were  now  discarded  and 
the  number  of  servants  reduced  by  one-half.  Nor  were 
the  nobles,  for  the  future,  to  have  the  exclusive  right  to 

f  i 


Punish¬ 
ment  of  the 
cowardly 
com¬ 
manders. 


Curtail¬ 
ment  of 
luxuries 


280 


The  treat¬ 
ment  o i  the 
common 
soldier. 


A  SHOUT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

all  the  commands ;  in  time  of  peace  technical  knowledge, 
in  time  of  war  bravery,  activity,  and  circumspection  were 
to  be  the  criterions  of  advancement.  As  a  matter  of  fact 
the  nobles  continued  and  still  continue  to  hold  the  chief 
positions,  but  their  training  has  become  rigid  and  thorough. 

Above  all,  there  was  need  that  the  calling  of  a  soldier 
should  be  made  respected  and  desirable;  that  the  old 
system  of  recruiting,  which  had  gathered  in  thieves  and 
cut-throats  by  the  hundreds,  should  be  abandoned ;  that 
respectable  parents  should  be  proud  to  have  their  sons  m 
the  ranks.  Infamous  indeed,  and  suitable  only  for  an 
army  of  convicts,  had  been  the  old  manner  of  cursing  and 
whipping  the  troops  into  shape.  It  had  been  m  the  power 
of  each  insolent  young  ensign  of  sixteen  to  flog  old  sol¬ 
diers  half  to  death  for  the  slightest  involuntary  breach 
of  discipline;  the  common  punishment  for  more  serious 
offences  had  been  the  horrible  running  the  gauntlet, 
which  brutalized  alike  those  who  received,  those  who  in¬ 
flicted,  and  those  who  witnessed  it.  With  his  hands 
bound  so  that  he  could  do  no  harm,  with  his  feet  ironed 
so  that  he  should  proceed  but  slowly,  with  a  ball  of  lead 
in  his  mouth  that  he  might  not  bite  off  his  tongue  for 
agony,  the  culprit  was  driven  again  and  again  down  the 
line-  of  two  hundred  men,  who  beat  him  with  rods  of  birch 
or  hazel  that  had  been  steeped  in  salt !  When  too  weak 
to  proceed  he  was  bound  to  a  stake  and  the  whipping 
continued,  and  not  rarely,  but  frequently,  the  punishment 
proved  fatal.  The  chief  innovation  of  the  committee  of 
reorganization  was  to  form  what  we  may  call  a  moral  awk¬ 
ward  squad  for  the  incorrigibles,  who  might  still  on  occasion 
be  flogged.  The  rest  were  to  be  treated  as  self-respecting 
men,  and  minor  breaches  of  discipline  were  to  be  pun¬ 
ished  with  detention  in  barracks  under  word  of  honor. 

This  new  army  was  to  be  essentially  for  use  and  not  for 


THE  REGENERATION  OF  PRUSSIA 


281 


in1; 

display.  The  tricks  of  the  parade  ground  were  now  aban¬ 
doned,  and  serious  work  and  target  shooting  took  their 
place.  Wigs  and  pigtails  were  discarded,  the  uniforms 
made  more  comfortable,  the  amount  of  baggage  decreased. 
Every  regiment  that  had  been  concerned  in  a  surrender 
had  been  permanently  disbanded,  so  that  no  old  preju¬ 
dices  01  traditions  stood  in  the  way.  The  Treaty  of  Tar  is, 
September^  1808?  had  required  that  the  numbers  of  the 
army  jshoul d  n  e  ver  _eAcefid  foTty- two  . thou s and ; —  a  poor 
showing  if  we  think  of  the  six  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
men  that  Napoleon  was  able  to  lead  against  Russia.  But 
the  fertile  brain  of  Scharnhorst  had  evolved  a  plan  by 
which  the  Jetter  of  the  law  migllt  .be  kept,  but  the  spirit 

evaded. 1  ly  Ilia,  f amo us  cr im per  system ,  so  Called  from 

the  spare  horse  that  was  kept  in  reserve,  recruits  were 
given  leave  of  absence  after  a  month  of  rigid  drilling  in 
the  mosTessential  points.  While  the  army  at  any  given 
time~imght  not  exceed  in  numbers  the  allotted  figure, 
there  were  thus  trained  in  all  some  one  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand  men ;  when  the  troops  marched  out  to  parade,  a 
number  of  them  invariably  remained  behind  in  the  bar¬ 
racks,  so  that  there  might  be  the  less  ground  for  suspi¬ 
cion  and  inquiry. 

In  other  fields  besides  the  administration  and  the  army, 
men  were  busily  working  for  the  regeneration  of  Prussia. 
The  so-called  Tugendbund  was  a  widespread  secret  soci¬ 
ety  with  the  object  of  inculcating  patriotism.  Some  of 
the  great  men  of  the  time  belonged  to  it;  others  made  use 
of  it  without  joining;  others,  still,  held  entirely  aloof. 
Stein  condemned  it  as  a  sort  of  modern  Vslimgevicht, 
There  was,  all  in  all,  a  considerable  amount  of  conspiracy 
in  progress  —  secret  buying  and  transporting  of  weapons, 
meetings  of  patriots  in  the  woods  at  night,  travelling 
under  false  names  and  in  disguise,  writing  of  letters  with 


The 

“  crimper 
system. 


The  rousing 
of  public 
sentiment. 


The  effect 
of  the 
Spanish 
uprising. 


282  A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

f 

sympathetic  ink.  The  idea  of  i^deringjiapplfion  was 
in  many  minds  ;  the  poet  IOeTsTcamed  it^rmind_inhis 
disordered  brain. "  TEeTIoulitsssrT oss,  court  mistress  of 
ceremonies,  was  reported  to  have  formed  a  definite  plot; 
and  actual  attempts  at  assassination  were  made.  Poets, 
preachers,  and  philosophers  kept  urging  the  inner  revolu¬ 
tion  that  alone  could  save  the  state.  Old  Father  Jahn 
invented  modern  gymnastics;  apparatus  was  put  up  in 
parks  and  public  places  ;  moral  and  political  teaching  ac¬ 
companied  the  exercises,  and  a  most  wholesome  change- 
was  immediately  apparent  in  the  youth  of  the  land.  Ernst 
Moritz  Arndt,  the  most^stirrijig^^  °f  thejime,  threw 
all  his  talents  into  furthering  the  cause;  while  John 
Gottlieb  Fichte  held  discourses  in  the  Academy,  in  the 
same  building  as  the  French  garrison,  and  dwelt  upon  the 
oppression  of  the  foreign  yoke  and  the  shame  of  the  pres¬ 
ent  situation.  So  lofty  were  his  ideas, .  indeed,  and 
clothed  in  such  philosophical  language,  that  the  French 
censor  saw  in  them  no  harm,  and  allowed  the  lectures  to  be 
published.  The  stupid  man  never  dreamt  what  a  bugle 
call  they  were  to  prove  to  national  revolution,  nor  to  what 
depths  they  were  to  stir  the  German  nation.  It  was  a 
campaign  of  education  that  Fichte  advocated;  and  he 
looked  for  results  at  the  end  of  twenty-five  years.  “  No 
man,  and  no  God,  and  no  possible  event  can  help  us,  he 
declared  ;  “  we  must  help  our  own  selves  if  we  are  to  be 
helped  at  all.”  And  in  similar  strains  Schleiermacher 
talked  to  the  crowded  congregations  in  his  little  church 
in  Berlin. 

Both  Stein  and  Scharnhorst  were  eager  to  start  an 
uprising  of  the  whole  people  at  the  first  favorable  oppoi- 
tunity  ;  that  opportunity  seemed  to  them  to  have  arrived 
when,  in  1808,  the  Spaniards  began  to_sh ore. what  a  purely 
national,  as^opposed  to  a  royal,  army  could  accomplish. 


THE  REGENERATION  OF  PRUSSIA  283 

The  effect  of  this  Spanish  rebellion  was  incalculable;  here 
was  a  people  weaker,  more  demoralized,  than  the  Prussians 
themselves,  holding__thi<ir  own  against  the  world- cojiqjieror 
and  requiring  his  presence  with  three  hundred  thousand 
j  men^  It  is  no  exaggeration  when  Seeley  calls  this,  “the 
greatest  European  event  which  had  happened  since  the 
I  rench  Revolution,  the  beginning  of  a  new  and  grand 
chapter  in  European  history.”  Qn_EnglancV  wliich_was 
already  helping  Spam,  Prussia  could  h^^elied  fojuiid  ; 
also  on  Austria,  which  was  on  the  verge  of  her  own  des¬ 
perate  revolt,  and  which  could  now  boast  of  a  general  sec¬ 
ond  only  to  Napoleon  himself.  But  Frederick  William 
would  call  no  levee  en  masse  so  long  as  Russia  would  not 
help  him;  and  Alexander,  though  beginning  to  detest 
Napoleon,  still  hoped  to  make  use  of  him'agamst  Turkey, 
having  already,  by  his  countenance,  acquired  Finland. 
The  question  has  often  been  raised  whether  the  Prussian 
king  was  right  or  wrong  in  his  firm,  not  to  say  obstinate, 
attitude.  As  events  turned  out,  he  gained  more  by  wait¬ 
ing;  but  only  because  a  miracle  happened.  What  human 
intelligence  could  have  foreseen  the  ruin  of  Napoleon’s 
army  in  the  Russian  campaign  ?  What  statesman  in  his 
senses  should  have  counted  upon  it  ?  Stein  was  perfectly 
right  when  he  argued  that  Prussia  had  little  to  lose  and 
everything  to  gain  by  acting  at  once. 

But  Stein’s  own  days  in  office  were  now  numbered.  By 
an  incomprehensible  lack  of  caution  on  the  part  of  a  con¬ 
spirator  who  stood  so  high,  and  on  whom  so  much  depended, 
in  September,  1808,  a  most  compromising^  letter  had  been, 
i ntercepted  and  forwarded-  to  Napojean^ jwho, published-it 
in  the  Paris  ]\Toniteur.  The  missive,  not  even  written  in 
cipher,  was  addressed  to  Count  Wittgenstein  at  the  court 
of  the  elector  of  Hesse  ;  Wittgenstein  himself  was  none 
too  reliable,  and  Stein’s  messenger,  Koppe,  seems  not  to 


Stein’s  in¬ 
tercepted 
letter. 


I 


284 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Timid 

counsels. 


Stein  goes 
into  exile. 


have  used  even  ordinary  care.  Yet  the  prime  minister  of 
Prussia  spoke  openly  of  fanning  the  spark  of  revolt,  of 
spreading  the  news  of  the  Spanish  successes,  of  forming 

connections  in  Hesse  and  Westphalia. 

Napoleon  had  referred  directly  to  this  letter  when  increas¬ 
ing  the  severity  of  his  terms  in  the  Treaty  of  Paris  :  could 
Frederick  William  have  taken  a  firm  attitude,  acknowl¬ 
edged  the  discontent  that  was  rife  among  his  subjects,  and 
made  the  most  of  it,  all  the  advantage  would  have  been  on 
his  own  side.  Napoleon  was  in  no  condition  to  cope  with 
two  popular  insurrections  at  the  same  time  ;  he  was  even 
now  withdrawing  his  troops  from  Prussia.  BjitThfi^king, 
as  usual,  pursued  a  half-hearted  policy,  neither  boldly 
resisting  nor  frankly  conciliating  the  "French  emperor. 
Stein’s  position  'became  untenable,  not  so  much  because 
of  the  threats  from  France,  as  of  the  bitter  opposition  of 
the  anti-reform  party  at  Berlin,  a  party  to  which  not  only 
the  contemptible  Kalckreuths  and  Kockeritzs  belonged, 
but  even  a  man  like  General  York,  who  was  in  the  end  to 
prove  himself  capable  of  a  grand  and  patriotic  act.  York  s 
present  attitude  was  supremely  pessimistic.  “The  French 
have  Argus  eyes,”  he  wrote.  “  For  a  Sicilian  V esper  or  for 
war  in  the  Vendee  fashion  the  German  is  not  at  all  suited. 
Besides,  in  our  flat  land  how  could  anything  of  the  kind 
be  possible  ?  In  our  present  circumstances,  the  wisest  and 
safest  course  is  quietly  to  watch  the  progress  of  political 
relations,  and  it  is  real  folly  to  provoke  the  enemy  at  our 
own  risk.”  Such  language  was  in  keeping  with  Comman¬ 
dant  Schulenburg’s  famous  remark  when  the  k  rench 
entered  Berlin:  “To  be  quiet  is  the  citizen’s  first  duty  !  ” 
When,  by  ratifying  the  Treaty  of  paris,  the  king  sided 
with  this  more  timid  party,  Stein’s  rement  was  inevi¬ 
table.  Men  of  good  judgment  belie\  t  he  would  have 
been  forced  to  go  even  if  the  famous  h  had  not  been 


THE  REGENERATION  OF  PRUSSIA 


285 


f/ 

•  : 

i 

I 


i 


i 

* 


t 

i 

s 

l 

’) 

1 


f 


intercepted.  It  was  three  months  after  that  event  before 
Napoleon  proscribed  him  and  confiscated  his  property; 
but  the  estrangement  with  the  king  had  been  increasing 
from  day  to  day.  The  poor  queen,  too,  was  bitterly 
disappointed  at  Stein’s  opposition  —  partly  on  political, 
partly  on  financial  grounds  —  to  a  projected  journey  to 
St.  Petersburg,  whither  the  royal  pair  had  been  invited 
by  the  Czar.  In  short,  by  the  end  of  November,  Frederick 
William  had  decided  to  part  with  his  minister,  —  first  de¬ 
claring  himself,  indeed,  in  full  sympathy  with  his  scheme 
of  administrative  reform.  On  the  day  of  his  dismissal, 
November  24,  Stein  drew  up  a  programme  for  still 
further  changes,  many  of  which  did  not  go  into  opera- 
tion  until  years  had  rolled  by— -among  them  the  recom¬ 
mendation  of  a  universal  national  representation.  A  few 
weeks  later,  he  was  fleeing  through  the  winter  night,  with 
a  price  set  on  his  head,  for  the  Austrian  frontier — still  to 
work  for  his  adopted  country  and  to  witness  its  redemp¬ 
tion  after  four  more  years  of  enslavement.  But  the 
interval  was  very  bitter ;  during  his  three  years’  stay  in 
Austria^he  was  allowed  to  play  no  part  in  public  affairs, 
and  he  thought  seriously  of  emigrating  to  America  — 
Kentucky  and  Tennessee  attracted  him  most;  there,  he 
considered,  were  to  be  found  the  finest  climate  and  the 
finest  soil,  as  well  as  glorious  rivers  like  his  own  Rhine. 
There  he  would  find  rest  and  pleasant  intercourse. 
Stein’s  successor  in  office  was  Altenstein,  a  man  of 
feeble^owers  and  not  likely  to  oppose  the  kip^  The 
journey  oTTfie  royal  "pair  to  St.  Petersburg  took  place ; 
the  Czar’s  hospitality  w~as  lavish,  his  personal  attentions 
sincere  and  well  meant,  and,  moving  about  in  his  splendid 
drawing-rooms,  the  poor  crushed  Louise  felt  herself  once 
more  a  beauty  and  a  queen.  It  was  the  last  gleam  of 
sunlight  that  was  to  fall  into  her  life ;  she  died  in  the 


286 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Napoleon 

invades 

Austria. 


following  year  of  a  broken  heart,  if  ever  such  a  thing  is 
possible. 

Without  Prussia’s_^idT~  Austria  entered  upon  her 
momentous  struggle,  —  driven ...  to. it,  not  so  much  by  any 
one  acb~of  Napoleon  against  herself,  as  by  indignation  at 
the  French  emperor’s  doings  in  Spain^^and  by  fears  Tor 
the  taurel  SKe~wasn5etter"equipped  than  fbuFye'ars  pre¬ 
viously,  having  found  in  Stadion  and  Archduke  Charles 
her  Stein  anW'SbharnhorsTr  and  having  already  organized 
a  oTprofessionally  trained  reserve.  For  once, 

too,  the  emperor  assumed  a  really  patriotic  tone,  —  point¬ 
ing  out,  in  his  war  manifesto,  the  difference  between  the 
Spaniards  dying  for  their  country  and  the  Germans 
acting  as  vassals  to  the  French  oppressor. 

Had  the  Danube  become  a  river  Lethe,  Napoleon  asked, 
that  the  people  of  Vienna  should  so  soon  have  forgotten 
their  former  disasters?  He  now  sent  one  large  army  from 
the  direction  of  France,  while  another,  under  Davoust, 
descended  from  Prussia.  He  himself  waited  at  Paris 
until  the  sun-telegraph  brought  him  word  that  the  Aus¬ 
trians  had  crossed  the  Inn ;  and  then,  travelling  night  and 
day,  made  his  way  to  Bavaria.  In  a  week  of  skirmishing, 
he  inflicted  such  injury  on  the  army  of  Archduke  Charles 
that  the  latter  abandoned  the  offensive,  beat  a  retreat 
toward  Vienna  by  the  roundabout  way  of  Bohemia,  and 
counselled  the  Austrian  emperor  to  begin  negotiations 
for  peace.  These  operations  at  Abensberg,  Landshut, 
Eggmiihl,  and  Ratisbon  are  among  Napoleon’s  supreme 
achievements.  On  arriving  at  Donauworth  he  had  found 
the  position  of  his  own  troops  very  unfavorable,  the 
enemy  well  concentrated ;  in  a  few  days  he  had  not  only 
changed  all  that,  but  was  able,  unmolested,  to  march  on 
Vienna.  There  is  no  doubt  but  that  the  troops  of  the 
Rhine  Confederation  had  been  of  the  greatCRLjaiisiiatauce 


I 

! 


THE  REGENERATION  OF  PRUSSIA  287 

. 

to  liim  in  gaining  this  series  of  victories  ;  it  was  their 
doing  that  he  won  this  campaignTffke  last  in  which  he 
was  ever_tQL_enjoy  continuous  success- 

It  may  be  said,  orr~the~  whule,  lhart  the  Austrian  people 
fought  with  the  utmost  bravery  and  that  the  entire  fault 
lay  with  their  leaders.  The  Archduke  Charles,  especially, 
disappointed  all  hopes.  He  hifd^TaT^aT^hance  to  cut  off 
Davous4^--a«»yy-but  had  failed  to  make  use  of  it ;  he  had 
taken  six  days  to  perform  a  march  which  the  French 
afterward  accomplished  in  two ;  he  had  given  Napoleon 
all  the  time  he  needed  to  reconcentrate  his  forces.  One 
of  the  worst  results  of  his  defeats,  worse  even  than  his 
loss  of  fifty  or  sixty  thousand  men,  was  the  discourage¬ 
ment  that  spread  through  Europe.  There  were  parts  of 
Prussia  where,  with  or  without  the  king’s  sanction,  a  little 
success  would  have  provoked  a  general  uprising  of  the 
people.  As  it  was,  there  took  place  in  these  days  two 
notable  attempts,  foredoomed,  however,  to  utter  failure: 
that  of  Dornberg,  who  tried  to  raise  an  insurrection  in 
Westphalia;  and  that  of  Major  Schill,  one  of  the  heroes 
of  Colberg,  who  induced  some  five  hundred  peasants  to 
follow  him,  and  set  forth  from  Berlin  to  “win  back  for 
his  beloved  king  his  last  village.”  He  had  meant  to  join 
with  Dornberg,  but  arrived  too  late,  and  expiated  his  act 
of  madness  by  a  brave  death  in  the  streets  of  Stralsund. 
His  head  was  severed  from  his  body  and  was  made  to 
grace  an  anatomical  museum ;  his  officers  were  shot,  his 
men  sent  to  the  galleys  to  labor  in  chains,  in  common  with 
French  robbers  and  murderers. 

1 11  the  vallexs^f-dhe  Tyroff  meanwhile,  there  had  actu¬ 
ally  taken  place  just  such  a  popiffajiu^ 

Scharnhorst  had  desired  for  Prussia.  This  strong  and 
sturdy,  but  narrow  and  superstitious,  people  had  been 
forced,  by  the  Treaty  of  Pressburg  of  P805,  to  transfer 

t 


Dornberg 
and  Schill 


The  upris¬ 
ing  of  the 
Tyrolese. 


288 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  battle 
of  Aspern. 


their  allegiance  from  Austria  to  JBayaria;  their  revolt 
now  had  nothingUlTGerman  national  character,  but  was 
directed  against  these  new  masters,  and  especially  against 
a  number  of  innovations  that  in  themselves  were  not 
at  all  unsalutary.  Such  were  the  conscription,  the 
restriction  of  the  number  of  church  holidays  and  the  | 

secularization  of  church  property.  It  was  the  clergy  j; 
whose  liberties  were  most  attacked,  and  it  wajs_the_clergy  || 
who  poured  the  flame  of  sedition  into  the  hearts  of  these,  i 

their  blind  followers. 

From  the  first,  Austria  had  fostered  and  stirred  up  1 
this  revolt ;  Archduke  John,  —  particularly  beloved  by  the 
Tyrolese, — kept  closely  in  touch  with  the  patriot  leaders ;  . 

Austrian  troops  moved  to  join  them,  and  Andreas  Hofer,  | 

the  brave  innkeeper  of  Innsbruck,  was  honored  with 
a  golden  chain  from  the  emperor.  The  fighting  was 
carried  on  with  unexampled  bitterness.  Hofer,  Peter 
Mayr,  Speckbacher,  and  Haspinger  showed  themselves 
heroic  leaders;  and  the  town  of  Innsbruck  was  three 
times  captured  and  three  times  lost.  In  this  part  of  the 
world  men  were  doing  their  duty,  no  matter  what  might 
be  happening  on  the  larger  field  of  war. 

Meanwhile,  at  Aspern,  on  the  northern  bank  of  the 
Danube,  four  niHes^below  Vienna,  Napoleon_ suffered  a 
defeat  such  as  had  never  yet  been  inflicted  upon  him. 
Wfttr-a  loss  of  fifteen  thousand  men  he  was  forced  to 
retreat  to  the  little  island  of  Lobau,  where  his  troops 
passed  two  days  in  abject  misery,  with  no  food  and  only 
the  polluted  waters  of  the  river  for  drink.  Such  was 
the  real  course  of  events;  officially  it  was  different. 

“  The  enemy  withdrew  within  its  lines,”  ran  Napoleon  s 
bulletin,  “and  we  remained  masters  of  the  battlefield. 

It  was  a  golden  opportunity  to  trap  the  whole  French 
force;  but  the  Austrians,  too,  had  suffered  heavily  and 


THE  REGENERATION  OF  PRUSSIA  289 


did  not  return  to  the  attack  with  sufficient  energy  ;  indeed, 
Archduke  Charles  hoped  now  that  diplomacy  would  take 
the  place  of  further  battle.  The  victory  of  Aspern 
undoubtedly  made  a  deep  impression  on  Europe,  as  did 
also  the  bravery  of  the  exiled  Duke  of  Brunswick,  who 
of  his  own  accord  raised  a  little  band,  fought  at  the  side 
of  the  Austrians,  and  eventually  cut  his  way  to  the  sea, 
and  took  ship  with  his  men  for  Helgoland.  It  is  thought 
that  even  Frederick  William  would  have  allowed  himself 
to  be  carried  away  by  the  current  of  enthusiasm  if  only 

Austria  had  been  willing  to  grant  his  reasonable  terms, _ 

to  promise  to  make  no  separate  peace,  and  to  engage 
to  help  Prussia  to  secure  her  former  boundaries.  But 
with  the  blindness  of  the  Hapsburg  court  there  was  no 
reckoning. 

The  battle  of  Wagram,  —  which  proved  a  defeat,  though 
not  an  overwhelming  one,  f  orAnsiria, — wasTike  Austerlitz 
before  the  Treaty  of  Pressburg  or  Friedland  before  Tilsit. 
The  emperor  was  tired  of  the  war,  the  more  so  as  an  in¬ 
tended  English  expedition  to  the  Baltic  coast  proved  a 
miserable  failure.  The  armistice  of  Znaim  was  followed 
by  the  Treaty  of  Vienna  which  brought  Austria,  compara¬ 
tively  speaking,  almost  as  low  as  Prussia  ;  she  lpst  terri- 
containing  nearly  four  million  souls  and  was  thrust 
far  back  from  the  Adriatic.  In  some  ways,  her  position 
was  even  worse  than  that  of  her  rival,  for,  as  has  been  well 
said,  she  had  played  her  last  card  and  failed.  She  had  had 
her  Stein  and  Scharnhorst,  had  tried  regeneration,  reor¬ 
ganized  her  army,  and  passed  liberal  measures.  Now,  all 
was  changed  ;  shephad  fallen  forever  from  her  high  ped- 
est&l;  and  there  followed  the  most  complete  reaction. 
Stadion  resigned,  and  Metternich,  the  incarnation  of  con- 
servatism,  took  his  place.  <Jne  of  his  first  acts  was  to~bringf 
about  the  union  of  Napoleon  with  Marie  Louise,  the 


< 


VOL.  II 


U 


The 

collapse  of 
Austria. 


290 


Napoleon’s 
breach  with 
Russia. 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

'/  j: 

daughter  of  the  Emperor  Francis.  The  emperor  s  admirers 
comparecThim  to  the  Deity  who  had  given  His  only  begot- 
ten  Son  for  the  good  of  His  people  ;  but  there  was  in 
reality  little  that  was  divine  about  this  cold-blooded  Haps- 
burg.  -  It  was  once  said  of  him  that  he  had  perfectly  polit-  | 
ical  bowels.  If  there  was  one  man  who  had  deserved  well 
of  him  it  was  Andreas  Hofer,  the  brave  leader  oftheTjrro- 
lese  ;  yet  Francis  abandoned  him  to  his  fate.  Between 
theTime  of  the  betrothal  and  the  wedding-day  Andreas 
was  court-martialled  and  shot.  As  for  MarmL^uiseher- 
self,  she  needs  little  sympathy  ;  there  was  nothing  in  the 
conduct  of  this  frivolous  woman  to  remind  one  of  a  sacn- 

ficial  victim. 

One  great  result  of  the  new  policy  of  Napoleon  toward 
Austria,  was  to  drive  into  the  camp  of  his  enemies  the  power 
that  was  destined  at  last  to  bring  him  to  his  knees.  Napo¬ 
leon  had  negotiated  for  the  hand  of  a  Russian  princess,  and, 
when  Alexander  temporized  on  account  of  the  youth  of  the 
lady  in  question,  had  abruptly  let  the  matter  drop.  Indeed 
the  French  emperor’s  only  intention  seems  to  have  been  to 
frighten  Austria  into  the  more  desired  match.  But,  apart 
from  this  blow  to  the  Czar’s  amour  propre,  there  were  causes 
enough  to  foment  dissension.  Alexander  was  not  suffi¬ 
ciently  pliant  in  the  matter  of  the  continental  blockade  by 
which  Napoleon  was  endeavoring  to  destroy  the  commerce 
of  England  ;  he  would  not  agree  to  seize  neutral  ships  that 
came  near  his  coasts,  and  thus  defeated  the  whole  of  Napo¬ 
leon’s  gigantic  scheme.  Negotiations  on  the  subject  only 
led  to  more  friction.  Then,  too,  the  French  were  encroach¬ 
ing  more  and  more  along  the  Baltic,  and  had  driven  out 
the  Duke  of  Oldenburg,  who  was  a  relative  of  the  Czar. 
But  what  touched  the  latter  most  nearly,  was  the  fact  that 
Napoleon,  by  his  treaty  with  Austria,  was  bestowing  more 
territory  on  the  duchy  of  Warsaw,  with  the  intent  of  mak- 


THE  REGENERATION  OF  PRUSSIA 


291 


ing  it  fully  subservient  to  himself.  The  Trench  emperor 
refused  to  ratify  an  agreement  drawn  up  by  his  own 
envoy,  Caulaincourt,  to  the  effect  that  the  dead  Polish 
kingdom  was  never  to  be  resuscitated,  and  that  even  the 
word  Poland  was  to  be  carefully  avoided  in  public  docu¬ 
ments.  I  he  idea,  of  a  Russian  invasion 
shaj3e_in  N apoleoffs^mind,  and  to  Alexander’s  accusation, 
that  he  was_plotting  to  restore  Poland,  he  simply  answered, 
“  *  c^°  not  intrigue^  1  carry- m  war  with  four  hundred  thou¬ 
sand  men.”  By  1811,  the  Czar  had  expressed  his  fear  to 
the  1  rench  envoy  that  the  world  would  not  be  large  enough 
for  himself  and  the  emperor  ;  and  in  that  same  year  Napo¬ 
leon  declared  the  alliance  at  an  end,  writing  with  unusual 
frankness,  “  Your  Majesty  has  no  more  friendship  for  me.” 
His  last  step,  his  usual  method  in  prefacing  a  war,  was  to 


publicly  insult  the  Russian  ambassador. 

There  was  no  question  but  that,  in  the  pending  struggle, 
all  the  newly  made  kings,  indeed  all  the  members  of  the 
Rhine  Confederation,  would  remain  on  Napoleon’s  side. 
The  latter  wrote,  in  April,  1811,  to  Frederick  of  Wiirtem- 
berg :  “  If  the  allied  princes  shall  inspire  me  with  even 
the  slightest  doubt  of  their  inclination  for  a  joint  defence, 
I  freely  declare  that  they  are  lost.  For  I  prefer  enemies 
to  uncertain  friends.”  Austria,  too,  so  recently  allied  by 
marriage  wi^ J^^gjmt.e.mqierorj  and  at  odds  with  the 
Czar  on  various  grounds,  agreed  to  furnish  the  grand 
army  .with  thirty  thousand  men.  As  for  Prussia,  wedgpd 
in  between  the  hostile  powers,  her  position  was  fairly  piti¬ 
able.  Artiest  her  land  was  to  be  trampled  over  by  im¬ 
mense  armies,  and  requisitions  to  be  imposed  upon  an 
almost  starving  people.  Her  sympathies*- naturally ,  were 
all  with  the  Czar,  but  her  momentary  interests  drove  her 
t°  the  side  of  the ^French.  And  Napoleon,  although  he 
adopted  a  friendly  tone,  would  stand  no  trifling ;  when 


Napoleon 
intimidates 
the  Ger¬ 
mans. 


Harden- 
berg’s  ad¬ 
ministra¬ 
tion. 


292  A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

the  Prussians,  not  yet  certain  of  the  future,  commenced  to 
mobilize  their  forces,  and  to  double  the  permitted  num¬ 
bers,  he  sternly  bade  them  halt  and  keep  within  bounds. 
After  the  fall  of  the  feeble  Altenstein,  there  came  to  the 

whose  nameitare 

chiefly  connected  with  great  legislative  reforms. .  Harden- 
berg;  differed  from  Stein  in  almost  every  particular,  an 
his  character  as  a  whole  is  less  admirable.  In  curious 
contrast  to  his  devotion  to  the  state,  and  his  willingness  to 
accept  responsibility,  was  a  youthful  frivolity  that  caused 
him  to  chase  forbidden  pleasures  and  adventures,  even  in 
old  age.  His  knowledge  of  the  world  stood  him  m  good 
stead°;  he  was  more  affable,  more  diplomatic,  than  Stein, 
and  he  won,  occasionally,  where  the  latter  would  assuredly 
have  failed.  The  great  problemof  his  administration  was 
to  stave  off  jhg,  bankruptcy  that  so  constantly  threatened 
the  sfateTand,  though  many  of  his  separate  measures  faile 
through  inherent  weakness,  in  the  mam  he  fulfilled  is 
task.  In  the  spring  of  1812,  there  were,  indeed,  some 
thirty-seven  million  thalers  still  due  to  France,  but  no 
province  had  been  forfeited,  nor  had  the  royal  domains 
fallen  into  French  hands.  . 

While  taxing  them  very  heavily^Harclenberg  had,  m 

other  respects,  done  what  he  could  to  improve  the  condi¬ 
tion  of  the  people.  At  the  cost  of  the  nobles,  thejaber^gd 
serfs  were  iitted  out  with  small  farms_pi_th§i£-pwn.  I  he 
.jiws,  for  the  first  time  in  centuries7were  given_eaual  legal 
rights  with  Christians.  They  were  no  longer  to  be  known 
as  the  Jew  Isaac  or  the  Jew  Abraham,  but  were  ordered 
to  provide  themselves  with  second  names.  Those  that 
they  chose  reflect  the  romantic  spirit  of  the  early  nine- 
teenth  century;  the  mountain,  the  valley,  the  rose,  t  e 
lily,  the  lion,  the  wolf,  the  golden  stars,  were  all  ed 
into  requisition  in  countless  combinations. 


293 


r 

j, 

THE  REGENERATION  OF  PRUSSIA 

{' 

But  all  the  struggles  with  adversity,  all  the  reforms  since 
Jena,  seemed  now  to  have  been  made  in  vain.  Though 
Napoleon  might  spare  Prussia  in  his  hurry  to  strike  Russia, 
t  ere  was  every  chance  that,  on  his  victorious  return,  he 
would  obliterate  her  territory  from  the  map  of  Europe 
Many  considered  it  the  duty  of  the  nation  to  fight  to  the 
death  and  fall  with  honor.  Even  Frederick  William 
turned  longingly  to  Russia  and  prayed  for  a  close  alliance, 
t  he  Czar,  however,  announced  his  intention  of  fighting  as 
W  ellmgton  was  fighting  in  Spain,  and  avoiding  close  con¬ 
tact.  Space,  illimitable  space,  was  the  chief  weapon  at  his 
command,  and  he  meant  to  use  it  to  the  utmost.  He 
agreed  that  Prussia  would  necessarily  be  submerged  for  a 

time,  but  declared  his  hope  that,  in  the  end,  all  would  turn 
out  for  the  best. 

Thus,jlriven  by  force  of  circumstances,  Frederick  Will¬ 
iam  begarTtoTre-got.iatc  with  FranceT  He  hopedTsince  he 
had  been  so  nea?  joining Hapoleon's  enemies,  that  he 
I  wol,bl  be  able  to  obtain  favorable  conditions;  he  even  found 
courage  to  utter  a  few  threats.  But  the  emperor,  in  his 
blunt,  characteristic  manner,  made  no  concessions  at  all ;  but 
laid  down  a  hard  and  fast  ultimatum,  and  gave  but  twenty- 
four  hours  for  its  acceptance  or  rejection.  The  Prussians 
I  were  to  owe  military  service  to  Napoleon  everywhere  save 
Turkey,  Spain,  and  Italy;  twenty  thousand  of  them 
were  at  oocfilojoin  with  him  in  fighting  their  former  best 
friend;  twenty  Thousand  more  were  to  garrison  Prussian 
fortresses  in  the  interests  of  Frauce;  requisitions  of  forage 
bread,  etc.^wera.  to  be  made  atonee,  but  payment  was  to 
be  a  matter  of  future  agreement,  —  such  were  the  gallino- 
terms  by  which  this  thoroughly  isolated  government  was 
;  forced  to  bind  itself  over.  The  work  of  the  patriots  was 
j  utK*°ne,  and  nearly  all  of  them,  with  sorrowing  hearts, 

:  asked  for  and  received  their  dismissal.  Gneisenau,  Scharn- 

i 


Prussia 
forced  into 
an  alliance 
with 
France. 


294 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

horst,  and  Boyen  all  resigned,  but  still  labored  in  secret 
for  the  cause ;  some  twenty-one  officers  entered  the  Bus- 


si  an  seivice.  ~ 

stein  in  St.  Stein  himself,  at  this  time,  received  a  summons  to  St. 
Petersburg.  Petersburg.  Alexander’s  first  act  was  to  apologize  for  the 
shameful  Treaty  of  Tilsit;  already,  in  his  summons,  he 
had  invited  the  great  political  reformer  to  aid  him  in  the 
struggle  against  the  enslavement  of  Europe.  Stemsde 
nite  task  was  to  win  over  Germans  for_the  Russian 
alliance: — Aided  by  Ernst~Moritz"£mat  he  inaugurated  a 
regAUr  campaign  of  enlightenment ;  a  German  commission 
and  a  German  legion  were  established  m  Russia ;  bands 
of  men  were  detailed  off  to  intercept  Napoleon’s  couriers ; 
journals  were  established  and  pamphlets  struck  off  from 


secret  presses. 

Once  more,  as  at  Erfurt,  the  French  emperor  held 
brilliant  court  on  German  soil,  and  the  Austrian  emperor 
and  the  Prussian  king  came  to  Dresden  to  do  him  honor. 
The  customary  salute  of  cannon  was  omitted  in  Frederic 
William’s  case,  and  Hardenberg  tells  in  his  diary  how 
Napoleon’s  first  words  were  a  gruff  “  Y ou  are  a  widower  . 
Francis  was  invited  every  day,  Frederick  William,  as  a 
person  of  less  distinction,  only  every  other  day,  to  the 
imperial  table. 

Napoleon’s  Meanwhile  the  grand  army,  the  largest  that  had  ever  been 
Russian  mustered  sincethedays  oTXerxes  —  it  is  computed  to  have 
campaign.  numpered  six  hundred  and  fifty,  thousand_men  —  came 
rolling  on,  and  a  large  part  of  it  soon  crossed  the  Russian 
frontier.  The  colossal  failure  of  jhis  campajgnjyas  due  to 
twcuiauses  :  first,  to  a  slackne^alSrdiscigine  arismgj^pm 
the  y outhf ulness-  of  dhe.-xenmits,  and  to  their  having  been 
allowed  to  plunder  on  the  way ;  and  second, °to 
of  procuring  suppliesin'  these  new  and  strange  surround¬ 
ings.  A  sufficiency' of  stores  had  been  gathered  together, 


THE  REGENERATION  OF  PRUSSIA 


295 


but  the  arrangements  for  carrying  them  were  inade^uate  ; 
through  the  death  of  horses  and  the  breaking  down  of 
wagons  immense  quantities  were  lost,  and  hunger  and 
thjisjybegan  their  fatal  work.  Long  before  the  ^winter 
set  in,  thousands  were  dying  every  day.  Then  came  the 
usual  dash  for  the  enemy’s  capital,  the  bloody  battle  of 

!  Borodino,  the  entry  into  silent  Moscow.  Napoleon 
carried~off  the  great  cross  on  the  Kremlin  because  he 
thought  it  was  gold ;  just  so  the  brilliancy  of  this  easy 
victory  was  to  turn  to  dross.  Flames  broke  out,  and, 
when  engines  were  sought  with  which  to  quench  them, 
none  could  be  found.  So  far  as  is  known,  it  was  the 
Russian  commandant  himself  who  set  fire  to  the  houses 
in  Moscow,  liberating  prisoners  for  the  special  purpose. 

On  the  dreadful  retreat,  the  ghastliest  in  all  recorded 
history,  there  is  no  need  to  dwell ;  but  seven  thousand  of 
the  original  advance  army  ever  returned  to  the  frontier, 
to  be  joined  by  twelve  or  fifteen  thousand  more  who  had 
been  stationed  nearer  home.  Napoleon  had  the  courage 
to  instruct  General  York,  in  command  of  a  Prussian 
force  near  Riga,  to  protect  the  retreat  of  the  French ;  and 
to  write  to  Frederick  William  from  Riga  to  increase  his 
stipulated  contingent.  He  himself  hastened  to  Paris  to 
laise  fiesh  tioops.  Inexhaustible  were  the  resources  of 
this  man,  who  could  almost  immediately  replace  an 
annihilated  army  of  half  a  million  men ;  it  is  true  the 
majority  of  the  new  soldiers  were  half-fledged  boys  whose 

[  natural  term  of  service  would  not  have  begun  until  two 
years  later. 

While  hurrying  homeward  from  Moscow,  Napoleon  Har'fhe  return 
given  out  that  the  grand  army  was  returning  at  his  heels  of  the 
in  vast  numbers  ;  but  the  whole  extent  of  the  terrible  catas-  remnants  °f 
trophe  became  apparent  to  the  Germans  when  the  fugitives  ^^oleon  S 
began  to  pass  through  their  cities  without  the  least  vestige  7 

if. 

KiB  m 


296 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

♦ 

of  organization.  It  was  hard  to  believe  that  these  were 
the  allies  that  had  marched  out  with  drum  and  trumpet 
but  a  few  months  before,  haughty  and  insolent  m  all  their 
ways  ;  it  seemed  rather  a  procession  of  penitents,  silent,  , 

in  sackcloth  and  ashes.  They  were  hollow-eyed  with  j 

suffering,  disfigured  with  frostbites,  and  they  wore,  foi  j 
the  most  part,  only  such  garments  as  the  peasants,  and 
even  the  women,  could  furnish  them.  Around  their  J 
shoulders  hung  pieces  of  carpet,  old  shawls,  even  skins  of 
cats  and  dogs  ;  on  their  feet  were  every  kind  of  substitute 
for  shoes.  The  vastly  greater  number  of  those  who  had 
fallen  in  battle  or  by  the  wayside  seemed  more  to  be 
envied  than  such  survivors ;  yet  these  poor  remnants  of 
humanity  were  soon  to  be  driven  into  new  wars,  being 
almost  the  only  veterans  capable  of  drilling  and  com¬ 
manding  the  young  recruits.  Frederick  William  had  j 
been  advised  not  to  harbor  them  in  Prussia,  but  to  such 
severity  he  could  not  bring  himself  ;  the  French  were 
nursed  in  Prussian  houses,  and  suffered  nothing  worse 
than  that  an  occasional  schoolboy  tried  to  frighten  them 
with  shouts  of  “  The  Cossacks  are  coming  !  ”  Besides  they 
were  Prussia’s  allies,  and  FrecUjrick_William  could  not 
make  up  hi&mind  to  renouncetbem  ;  ifhehated  Napoleon, 
he  also  distrustecTthe  Russians  and  Austrians.  It  is  also 
to  be  f earecTThat'' he  distrusted  himself  'and  his  own 
people. 

The  treason  There  was  one  man  whose  dilemma  was  even  worse  than 

Of  General  that  of  the  king,  because  immediate  action  was  needed. 

York.  General  York,  in  command  of  the  only  Prussian  armyTn 

the  fields —  not  yet  knowing  the  extent  of  the  disaster, 
buT ordered  by  Napoleon  to  protect  his  fleeing- forces,— 
was  attHe  same  time  approached  by  the  Russians,  who  had 
never  really  looked  upon  him  as  their  enemy.  The  Czar 
himself  sent  a  promise  not  to  desert  Prussia  till  her  old 


THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION 


297 


[ 

1  i 

boundaries  should  have  been  fully  restored.  York,  a 
rough  character  who  said  that  he  never  could  feel  at  home 
with  the  “  damned  michs  and  mirs  ”  of  his  own  language, 
was  personally  one  of  the  most  upright  of  men,  with  the 
strictest  ideas  of  military  duty  ;  he  was  the  officer  of  a 
king  who  was  bound  by  a  solemn  treaty  and  who  seemed 
inclined  to  keep  it.  Yet  the  trained  eye  of  the  observant 
general  saw  that  now,  if  ever,  was  the  time  for  breaking 
loose  from  an  unbearable  yoke.  He  fought  and  wrestled 
with  himself,  entered  into  negotiations  with  the  enemy, 
and  at  last  said  to  Clausewitz,  who  came  to  meet  him  at 
Tauroggen  in  the  name  of  the  Russian  general  Diebitsch, 

“  You  have  me  !  Tell  General  Diebitsch  that  to-morrow 
morning  early  I  will  come  within  the  Russian  lines.  Time 
and  place  I  leave  to  him.”  Assembling  the  officers  of  his 
corps,  he  asked  those  to  join  him  who  were  willing  to  risk 
their  lives  for  freedom  and  for  fatherland ;  and,  when  the 
shouts  of  joy  and  acquiescence  had  died  away,  he  said  sol¬ 
emnly,  “  Then  with  the  help  of  God  may  the  work  of  our 
liberation  begin  and  be  carried  to  a  finish.”  To  the  king 
tie  had  already  written,  u  If  I  am  doing  wrong,  I  will  lay 
my  old  head  without  a  murmur  at  your  Majesty’s  feet.” 

On  the  30th  of  December,  1812.  tm  aigmpd  farunug 
Convention  of  Tauroggen,  according  to  which  his  whole 
orce  was  to  remain  neutral  until  further  commands 
hould  arrive  from  the  king,  and  in  no  case  to  fight  against 
tussia  during^tEe  next  two  months. 

Exactly  what  view  Frederick  William  took  of  York’s  Frederick 
action  is  impossible  to  determine ;  there  is  reason  to  William 
>elieve  that  his  feelings  and  his  actions  were  at  variance.  audGeneral 
le  repudiated  the  Convention  of  Tauroggen  and  dism  Wd  York* 

York  from  his  seryiceTEut  the  messenger  who  bore  the 
hrder  was  apparently  instructed  to  fall  into  the  hands  of 
he  Russians,  and  even  to  encourage  the  latter.  If  such 


298 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Frederick 
William  at 
last^gives 

waj. 


was  the  case,  York  himself  was  not  in  the  secret ;  deeply 
depressed,  he  wrote  to  General  Billow  to  know  if  those  in 
power  in  Berlin  had  sunk  so  low  as  not  to  dare  to  burst 
the  chains  of  slavery  they  had  worn  so  long.  “  With 
bleeding  heart,”  he  continues,  “  I  tear  away  the  bonds  of 
obedience  and  wage  war  on  my  own  account.  I  he  army 
wishes  war  with  France,  the  people  wish  it,  the  king  wishes 
it ;  but  the  kini’s  will  is  not  free.”  Frederick  William  s 
upholders  maintain  that  he  was  absolutely  forced  into 
double  dealing  from  the  fact  that  the  French  troops  on 
German  soil  still  outnumbered  the  Prussians  by  five  to 
one,  and  that  in  Berlin  itself  he  was  helpless  in  the  midst 
of  a  large  French  garrison.  The  king  certainly  desired  the 
alliance  with  Russia,  but,  as  Hardenberg  wrote  to  Stem 
«  propos  of  “dear  Amalia’s  marriage”  :  “Father  wishes 
everything  to  remain  secret  until  uncle  has  settled  mat¬ 
ters  properly,”  wherein,  of  course,  “Amalia”  stands  for 
Prussia,  “father”  for  the  king,  “ unfile  ”  for  the  Czar. 

Frederick  William,  in  short,  was  going  through  another 
of  his  terrible  crises  of  indecision.  On  the  one  hand,  he 
seems  to  have  hoped  that  by  remaining  friendly  to  Na- 
poleon  he  could  procure  a  remission  of  the  remainder  of 
his  debt  and  the  removal  of  all  French  troops;  on  the 
other,  Russia  threatened,  in  case  of^the  refusal  of ^ an 
alliance,  in  practically  annihilate  fefSIa^Hdjnerge  it  Tn  a 
new  ^kingdom  of  Poland.  England,  too,  alternately  urged 
and  warned.  At  home,  petitionsTrdm  the  people  poured 
in  from  all  sides  ;  and  conservatives  and  liberals  alike 
joined  in  the  cry.  Once,  Hardenberg,  after  a  long  con¬ 
ference  at  Potsdam,  in  which  he  urged  Frederick_William 
to  strike,  went  down  on  his  knees  and  wetted  the  king  s 
handwith  his  tears.  Stein,  in  East  Prussia,  as  agent  ot 
the  Czar,  was  moving  heaven  and  earth  to  provoke  a  rup- 
ture.  Calling  together  the  provincial  estates,  he  induced 


THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION 


299 


i 


York  to  appear  and  propose  a  scheme,  which  was  adopted, 
for  calling  out  the  Landwehr.  Frederick  William  began 
to  cower  before  this  new  Simon  de  Montfort,  who  sum¬ 
moned  parliaments  without  his  leave.  Almost  worse  than 
the  k  rench  he  hated  these  strong  men  who  seemed  to  be 
shaking  at  the  prerogatives  of  his  throne.  At  Scharn- 
horst  he  scolded  behind  his  back ;  Boyen  he  caused  to  be 
watched  by  the  secret  police ;  once,  when  Stein  lay  at  the 
point  of  death,  he  failed  to  visit  him.  So  much  the  war 
party  at  last  accomplished  —  partly,  indeed,  by  spreading 
a  report^ that  the  French  intended  to  seize  the  king’s  per- 

where  he  was  surrounded  by  hostile  influences,  and  take 
up  his  residence  in  Breslau,  where  he  would  be  nearer 
to  the  Czar.  Here,  at  Breslau,  he  at  once  began  to  show 
more  spirit  and  determinationT alT  exemptions  from  mili¬ 
tary  service  were  declared  removed,  and  for  the  first  time 


m  Piussia  s  history  men  of  gentle  birth  served  in  the 
ranks,  —  regiments  of  chasseurs  being  formed  for  them, 
in  which,  indeed,  they  were  treated  with  leniency  and  con¬ 
sideration.  Soon,  by  Stein’s  mediation,  the  Treaty  of 
Kalisch  was  arrangecLywith  Russia  y  and  the  Czar  agreed 
to  continue  m  arms  until  Prussia  should  haveT  regained 
her  possessions  or  their  equivalent. 

Finally,  on  March  16,  1813,  war  was  declared  against  Wild 
French.  On  the  following  day  the  king  issued  a  stir-  enthusiasm 
ring  call  to  his  people.  Article  8,  of  a  convention  signed  for  tlie 
on  March  19,  decreed  that  there  should  at  once  be  estab- 
j lished  an  army  of  the  line  (armee  de  ligne ),  a  Landwehr 
(une  miliee ),  and  a  Landsturm  ( levee  en  massed).  Now  at 
last  people  and  king  were  united;  the  long  period  of 
mutual  doubt  and  suspicion  was  past,  and  the  Titanic 
struggle  for  liberation  had  begun.  A  wave  of  enthusiasm 
like  to  that  at  the  time  of  the  crusades  swept  over  north- 


300 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

ern  Germany;  honest  peace  or  glorious  death  was  the 
watchword,  and  more  answered  the  call  than  could  be 
accepted.  Nothing  could  exceed  the  spirit  ot  self-sacri¬ 
fice  shown  by  the  masses;  even  a  Frenchman  wrote  that 
the  Prussians  had  restored  the  human  countenance  to 
honor.  Women  were  busy  night  and  day  turning  their 
husbands’  blue  Sunday  coats  into  the  simple  uniform  re- 
ouired  for  the  Landwehr ;  mothers  allowed  their  young 
boys  to  leave  school  and  enlist;  and  nine  of  the  scholars  o 
the  “  gray  cloister  ”  in  Berlin  found  death  on  the  field  of 
battle.  Young  men  who  sought  excuses  for  not  serving 
were  flouted  by  their  girl  friends.  Whole  classes  from 
the  universities,  professors  at  their  heads,  adjourned  m  a 
body  to  the  recruiting  ground;  Fichte  and  Schleiermacher 
drilled  in  the  same  company  of  the  Landsturm,  and  the 
author  of  the  Vocation  of  Man,  when  they  would  have 
made  him  an  officer,  refused  with  a  simple,  “Here,  I  am 
only  fit  for  a  private.”  To  supply  the  exhausted  state 
with  funds  for  its  military  needs,  voluntary  gifts  of  every 
kind  were  made;  it  was  a  disgrace  after  this  war  to  be  found 
in  possession  of  jewelry  or  of  silver  plate;  One  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand  persons  exchanged  their  wedding  rings 
for  rings  of  iron  with  the  inscription,  “  Gold  I  gave  for 
\  iron  ” ;  there  were  maidens  who  sold  the  very  hair  from  i 
,  their  heads,  others  who  marched  off  to  battle  in  male  attire. 

The  The  £<jn*ce&lAspecially  —  consisting  of  someone  hun- 

Laniwehr.  dred  and  fifty  thousand  men,  between  the :  ages  of  seventeen 
and  f ortyreaSE  of  whom  wore  the  deyifig^ .With  God  tor 
king  and  country  ”  —  dilexcellent  service,  the  worst  result 
of  their  want  of  proper  training  being  shown  in  the  terri  e 
death-rate,  in  hard-fought  battles,  compared  with  the  regi¬ 
ments  of  the  line.  General  York,  at  first  an  opponent  of 
the  whole  institution,  lived  to  take  off  his  hat  to  a  battalion 
of  the  Silesian  Landwehr ,  declaring  that  it  had  foug  it  1  e 


B 

the  war  of  LIBERATION  3QJ 

a  battalion  of  old  grenadiers.  Many  of  its  members,  from 
generals  down  to  privates,  won  the  iron  cross, -that  spe¬ 
cial  mark  of  distinction,  bestowed  for  the  first  time  in  this 
war,  and  intended  to  symbolize  the  bitter  hardships  of  the 
time  as  well  as  the  holiness  of  the  uprising.  Stein’s  sug¬ 
gestion  for  furnishing  an  incentive  to  great  deeds,  had 
been  to  abolish  altogether  the  old  nobility  of  birth  and 
establish  a  new  one  founded  on  military  achievement. 

L?,  jandsturm,  as  originally  planned,  was  to  offer  a 
last  desperate  resistance,  on  the  part  of  all"  who  could 
,  ram  iS  j  a  weaPon,  against  an  invading  enemy.  Its  mem¬ 
bers  werg  to  wear  no._uniform,  but  tedium. ..them^Hes  "as 
theycoud.even  wi.h  pikes,  axes.  scythes,  and  pitchforks. 
Should  thcpnemy  fall  upon  their. towns,  they  were  to 
destroy  their  .flour*  pour  out  their  wine,  burn.. their  mills, 
choke  their  wellajrith  rubbislynnd  shake  the  fruit  from 
thrnr  trees. —  The  unfortunate  district  that  should  fall 
into  the  hands  of  the  enemy  was  to  be  under  an  interdict, 
as  it  were,  — with  deep  mourning,  no  festivities,  not  even 
a  marriage  ceremony,  without  express  permission.  In 
the  first  enthusiasm,  more  was  expected  of  the  Landsturm 
than  old  age  and  unwarlike  habits  could  possibly  accom¬ 
plish  ;  its  real  province  was  eventually  found  to  lie  in 
police  and  guard  duty  that  set  free  the  Landwehr,  and 
in  furnishing  reserves  to  the  latter  body.  One  indispu¬ 
table  benefit  of  the  whole  institution  was  the  spreading 
broadcast  of  the  sentiment,  that  this  war  was  directly  the 
affair  of  every  person  in  the  land.  In  Berlin,  not  only 
men,  but  even  women  of  position,  aided  in  building  in- 
trenchments.  Never  had  Napoleon  been  more  mistaken 
than  when  he  spoke  with  scorn  of  this  people,  calling 
them  the  Gascons  of  Germany,  and  declaring  that  they 
would  never  fight.  He  had  a  plan  all  in  readiness  for 
iividing  up  the  weak  state ;  he  was  scathing  in  his  denun- 
rj  I 


The  Lan&~ 
sturm. 


^Q2  A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

ciations  of  its  ungratefulness,  and  spoke  of  “the  T 
Treaty  which  had  restored  the  king  to  his  throne, 
the  Paris  Treaty  which  “ permitted  it  [Prussia]  to  beet 

Bluclier.  Commander-in-chief  of  the  allied  forceswasjhe  old  h 

KutusoffPwkiie^^fSSSE^SSSS^^w^e  the  l 

sfan  Wittgenstein  and  the ,Prusshni_Bluchei-.  .  The  ora 
to  whom  Bliicher  voluntarily  subordinated  himself,  wa: 
no  way  a  remarkable  general ;  nor  were  the  Russian  c 
tingents  kept  to  their  work  by  rigid  discipline.  Gneisei 
writes,  that  he  visited  the  Russian  camp  at  Borna  tb 
separate  times,  once  in  the  morning,  once  at  noon,  i 
once  at  night,  and  that  each  time  he  found  the  comma 
ing  generals  in  bed.  As  for  Bliicher,  he  was  sevej 
years  old  and  for  decades  at  a  time  had  lived  the  li  e 
a  private  citizen  ;  of  late  he  had  been  very  ill,  even  on 
his  mind.  During  the  winter  of  1810  and  1811  he  1 
had  all  sorts  of  strange  fancies,  among  them  that  he  & 
live  beast  in  his  body.  But  Scharnhorst  had  once  s 
that  he  would  prefer  Bliicher  in  a  litter  to  any  other  at 
bodied  man;  Bliicher  must  command,  Scharnhorst  n 
declared,  “even  though  he  have  inside  of  him  a  hundi 
elephants.”  Certain  it  is,  that  Bliicher’s  soldiers  ldolis 
him,  although  on  occasion  he  could  be  severe  enou; 
Napoleon  spoke  of  him  as  the  vieux  renard ,  and  respeci 
him  more  than  any  other  of  his  antagonists. 

'The  object  of  the  French  emperor  was  to  unite  all 

‘  ces,  and,  h^rymT^^  hf  °f 

paign  ouAeAMajTThaFbf  thelffies  was  to  strike 

as  swiftly  as  possible,  and,  at  the  same  time,  to  raa  e 
states  of  the  Rhine  confederation  throw  out  their  fa 
colors  to  the  wind.  The  natur^meetblg.-poinGdor 
two  hostile  armies  was  Sagony,  whose  frightened  ki 
accordingly,  fled  with  the  contents  of  his  green  vault,  s 


Saxony  the 
centre  of 
operations. 


THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION 


303 


had  the  rarest  pictures  of  the  Dresden  gallery  transferred 
to  the  impregnable  Konigstein.  With  characteristic  du¬ 
plicity,  his  minister,  Count  Sennft,  expressed  friendship 
for  Prussia,  but  at  the"  same  time  negotiated  secretly  with 
N^5SEST~Tt~was,  in  fact,  here  in  Saxony  that  the  main 
battles  of  the  campaigmtook  place,  —  Lutzen  and  Bautzen, 

Dresden  and  Lei$ng,C  —  while  four  separate  attempts  on  the 
part  of  Napoleon  to  take  the  Prussian  capital  resulted  in 
as  many  minor  battles  in  that  direction. 

Lutzen,  or  (dross  Gorschen,  and  Bautzen,  were  -French  Liitzen  and 
victories,  valuable  in  so  far  as  they  kept  alive  the  tradi-  Bautzen, 
tions  of  Napoleon’s  invincibility.  He  made  the  most  of 
them  in  his  bulletins  to  Paris,  comparing  them  to  Auster- 
litz,  Jena,  Friedland,  and  Moscow.  It  was  now  that 
Saxony  threw  aside  the  veil,  and  declared  openly  for  her 
^ector^her  king  severely  pilhishIhgTHbs<^who^:ad 
been  friendly  to  the  Prussians.  Yet  never  were  victories 
bought  more  dearly.  “What!”  cried  Napoleon  himself, 

“  no  result,  no  trophies,  no  prisoners,  and  such  a  butchery!  ” 

Forty  thousand  men  had  fallen  in  the  two  engagements; 
and  where  were  more  to  come  from  now  that  France  was 
using  up  the  last  of  her  three  million  recruits  called  out 
since  1793?  The  issue  of  Lutzen  had  long  been  exceed¬ 
ingly  doubtful.  “  Do  you  think  my  star  is  sinking  ?  ” 

Napoleon  had  seriously  asked  General  Berthier ;  and  once 
he  called  out  angrily,  “  These  beasts  have  learnt  something !  ” 

Ajter  Bautzen,  Napoleon  made  what  he  himself  later  The  two 
designated  as  the  greatest  mistake  of  his  life,  by  entering 
into  the  armistice  known  as  the  truce  of  Poischwitz.  He  ce* 
desired  to  strengthen  his  cavalry,  wliich  was  relatively 
very  small;  Tut  he  Lhought,  also'  tov break  down  the  coali- 
tion  by  tempting  offers  to  the  Czar.  He  would  give  up 
Poland;  hewqii  ld_re,u  Qiince  his  FuFopeahlilockades.  And 
against^ Austria,  which  was  now  demanding  "back  the 


304 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Scharn- 

horst’s 

death. 


provinces  wrested  from  lier  in  1809,  and  threatening  to 
ioin  the  coalition,  he  would  have  time  to  call  up  an  army 
from  Italy.  He  despised  this  power  that  he  had  twice  so 
thoroughly  humbled.  “  If  you  want  war  you  shaU  have 
it,”  he  said  to  Metternich;  “  au  revoir  in  Vienna  !  ” 
the  Treaty  of  Iteiehenbach,  Austria _  had  agreed,  should 
N apolbdn  ^  to-  join-  4ha  allies  with  150,000 

men."  England  now  promised  to  send  subsidies;  while 
Sweden,  in  return  for  freedom  of  .action  as  regarded 
Norway!  also  joined  in_the  war.  Reeniorcementsjirriyed 
from  Russia  V  while  £russia,  in  the  course  of  these  two 

premouVmdnths,  was  able  to  com^^  tlie  o£  Jier 

Landwehr  and  send  them  to  the  front.  The  grand  total 
of  the"  allied  forces  now  amounted  to  800,000  men,  that 
of  Napoleon’s  army  to  500,000  ;  but,  owing  to  the  neces¬ 
sity  ST'defending  many  vulnerable  points,  the  superiority 
of  the  coalition  on  the  actual  scene  of  war  was  not  more 
than  52,000.  Prussia,  in  this  matter  of  raising  troops, 
had  made  a  splendid,  almpst  unequalled,  showing  ;  with  a 
population  of  but  4,500,000,  and  with  resources  wretchedly 
crippled  since  Tilsit,  she  furnished  in  all  nearly  300,000 

men.  .  , 

Scharnhorst,  indeed,  the  i %de  f  a  t  igg^hlo. ... QXg amz er ,  t  ie 

onljfman  of  his  time  who  can  worthily  be  compared  to 

the  American  Washington,  did  not  live  to  see  the  fruits 

of  his  silent  and  self-sacrificing  labors.  Wounded  at 

Liitzen,  he  still  continued  to  spare  himself  no  fatigues; 

and  a  journey  to  Vienna  and  Prague,  undertaken  in  order 

to  hasten  the  new  alliance,  proved  fatal  to  his  shattered 

constitution.  Not  altogether  appreciated  even  in  his  own 

day,  those  best  able  to  judge  regarded  him  almost  as  a 

deity.  Ten  years  later  Gneisenau  wrote  to  Clausewitz, 

“  You  were  his  John,  I  only  his  Peter ;  yet  I  never  played 

him  false  as  the  latter  did  his  Master  !  ” 


THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION 


305 


’j 

At  the  end  of  the  truce  Napoleon’s  forces  stood  in  the  The  distri- 
centre  of  a  half-circle,  on  the  circumference  of  tvhich  were  bution  of 
Bernadotte’s  army  near  Berlin,  Bliicher’s  in  Silesia,  and  forces- 
that  of  the  commander-in-chief,  the  Austrian  Schwarzen- 
berg,  in  Bohemia.  In  the  latter  camp  were  the  three 
crowned  heads,  —  the  Czar,  the  emperor,  and  the  Prussian 
king.  Blucher,  with  the  smallest  of  the  three  armies 
against  the  largest  force  of  the  enemy,  had  been  told  to 
avoid  battle  unless  the  chances  should  be  all  in  his  favor. 

Is  apoleon’s  plan  was  to  burst  through  the  barrier  on  the 
north  and  come  in  touch  with  the  fortresses  on  the  Vistula 
and  the  Oder,  which  still  held  French  garrisons;  that  is 
why,  apart  from  his  natural  predilection  for  taking  the 
capitals  of  his  enemies,  he  made  such  repeated  attempts 
to  occupy  Berlin.  He  was  thwarted  by  the  necessity  of 
remaining  on  the  defensive  against  the  Silesian  and  Bohe¬ 
mian  armies,  and  of  keeping  them  from  uniting  with 
Bernadotte  s  forces.  That  the  allies  from  the  first  had 
followed  the  consistent  plan  of  drawing  the  enemy  into 
their  net  by  concentrating  around  Leipzig,  is  a  mistaken 
supposition ;  some  such  idea  had  influenced  them  in  the 
beginning,  but  circumstances  had  greatly  modified  their 
proceedings. 

By  the  terms  of  the  armistice,  a  strip  of  neutral  territory  The  battle 
had  been  left  between  Blucher ’s  army  and  the  French  ;  on  tbe 
this  the  latter  had  been  the  first  to  violate,  and  Blucher,  Katzbach- 
in  turn,  pressed  forward,  the  enemy  retreating  before 
him.  Napoleon  himself  marched  up  with  his  guard  to 
deal  a  decisive  blow  at  this  audacious  pursuer,  but  hastily 
returned  to  Dresden  on  learning  that  Schwarzenberg  was 
threatening  that  city.  Blucher,  with  his  hundred  thousand 
men,  unfolded  an  unheard-of  activity, —  now  pursuing,  now 
withdrawing,  turning  day  into  night  and  night  into  day, 
but  always  keeping  close  to  the  enemy.  Each  march  and 

VOL.  II  —  X 


306 


Berna¬ 
dotte’ s  dis¬ 
honesty. 


’  A  SHOUT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

each  countermarch  cost  him  many  lives ;  the  Landwehr 
suffered  terribly  in  the  rain-sodden,  shelterless  camps; 
and  worst  of  all,  some  of  those  in  the  lesser  commands 
lost'  faith  in  their  superiors.  General  York,  the  hero  o  I  , 
Tauroggen,  burst  into  the  room  at  Jauer,  where  Blucher 
and  Gneisenau  were  dining  with  their  officers,  and  one  | 

out  “You  are  ruining  the  troops;  you  are  marching 
them  to  no  purpose !  ”  In  scathing  terms  York  wrote  and 
denounced  to  the  king  the  whole  plan  of  operations.  jj 
But  on  the  very  day  after  this  scene  the  French  marshal, 
Macdonald,  walked  into  the  trap,  and  gave  the  longed-for 
opportunity  for  the  great  battle  onJheJ^Ltabach,  which, 
though  fought  in  pouring  rain  and  mainly  with  bayonets 
and  the  ends  of  muskets,  inflicted  on  the  French_such_a 
defeat  as  they  had  never  yet  suffered  m  any  one  engage-  | 
ment7”—  as  Macdonald  reported  to  his  emperor,  a  who  e 
army  had  ceased  to  exist.  A  noble  woman  wrote  to 
Gneisenau  that  this  one  achievement  had  wiped  out  years 
of  shame  and  sorrow,  and,  indeed,  a  very  long  time  it  was 
since  the  Prussians  had  comejmt^  | 

thousand  prisoners^-  _ 

In  8eveS~nrinor~skirmishes,  fought  in  the  space  of  one 
week,  Silesiar  was  then  cleared  of  the  Frengh;  while  an 
onslaught  of  the  Tatter^  in  the  direction  of  Berlin,  had 
brought  down  upon  them  the  defeat  of  Gross  Beeren  at 
the  hands  of  General  Billow  — a  defeat  which  would  have 
been  still  more  severe  but  for  the  indecision  and  timidity, 
if  not  the  masked  treason,  of  the  Swedish  crown  prince. 
Bernadotte  had  wished  Billow  to  evade  the  corps  of  the 
French  marshal,  Oudinot,  by  retreat;  but  the  Prussian  gen¬ 
eral  had  cried  out  to  his  soldiers,  “  Our  bones  shall  bleach 
in  front  of,  not  behind,  Berlin !  ”  and,  at  the  decisive  mo¬ 
ment,  had  directly  disobeyed  the  orders  of  his  superior 
commander.  Yet  Bernadotte,  in  his  report  of  the  battle, 


THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION 


30T 


claimed  the  full  credit  for  himself,  and  accepted  the  ova¬ 
tion  of  the  Berlin  magistrates !  This  former  marshal  of 
Prance,  who  had  been  elected  successor  to  the  Swedish 
throne,  had  strange  and  wonderful  projects  in  his  head  ; 
and  his  reason  in  sparing  the  French  is  said  to  have  been 
a  desire  to  one  day  occupy  their  throne  !  A  fortnight 
later,  at  Dennewitz,  in  spite  of  continued  friction,  Billow 
and  Tauentzien  routed  the  forces  of  Ney  with  vastly  in¬ 
ferior  numbers,  the  total  loss  of  the  enemy  being  little 
less  than  twenty-four  thousand  men.  Bernadotte,  as  be¬ 
fore,  claimed  the  honors  of  this  most  important  victory, 
gained  in  spite  of  his  express  commands. 

P  or  the  last  time  in  this  campaign  of  1813,  fortune  The  battle 
smiled  upon  the  French  emperor  when,  atJDresclen,  with  of  Dresden, 
one  hundred  thousand  men,  he  put  to  flight"  the'  army  oi^A' 
Schwarzenberg,  with  half  again  that  number.  The  allies 
lost  the  battle  through  the  incredible  slowness  and  incom¬ 
petency  of  their  leaders,  —  Schwarzenberg  having  delayed 
his  attack  until  Napoleon  himself,  who  was  miles  away,  could 
comfortably  reach  him.  The  disheartening  news  from 
Gross  Beeren  and  from  Silesia  had  alone  prevented  Napo¬ 
leon  from  following  up  his  advantage ;  indeed,  the  allies 
had  looked  for  the  worst,  and  Gneisenau  had  taken  the 
precaution  of  establishing  a  camp  of  possible  refuge,  far 
back  in  Silesia.  The  Austrians  considered  the  campaign 
at  a  close,  and  began  to  talk  of  the  invincibility  of  this 
enemy,  who  had  until  so  recently  been  their  own  ally. 

But  the  moral  effect  of  the  victory  was  soon  effaced  by  Kulm  and 
a  brilliant  achievement  of  the  Prussian  Kleist,  who,  while  Nollendorf. 
the  Prussians  engaged  the  enemy  in  the  valley  near 
Kulm,  mounted  the  heights  of  Nollendorf,  in  the  rear  of 
Vandamme’s  corps,  and  descended  upon  it  to  such  pur¬ 
pose  that  nine  thousand  French  were  made  prisoner. 

Within  the  space  of  one'^ni^re’week'TTapoleon  had  lost 


308 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  closing 
in  on 
Leipzig. 


nearly  eighty  thousand  men ;  while,  in  addition,  his  ally , 
Bavaria,  trimming  her  sails  to  the  wind,  had_gmi^oyer_to 
the  enemy.  The  Treaty  of  ^4_concluded  with  the  allies, 
was  all  to  the  jid vantage  of  Bavaria,  guaranteeing  her 
practically  all  that  she  had  ^uued_  by  the  grace  of  Napo- 
leon^ja^  ?  rendering  impossible  such  a  re¬ 

construction  of  Germany  as  Stein,  for  instance,  deemed 
indispensable. 

These  were  ponderous  blows  that  were  falling  upon  the 
French  emperor  ;  this  time  his  star  was  indeed  sinking. 
And  now,  most  fatal  of  all,  Bliicher  had  revived  the  old 
plan  of  closing  in  upon  Leipzig,  and  had  set  to  work  with 
an  energy  that  carried  along  even  such  dead  weights  as 
Schwarzenberg  and  Bernadotte,  —  neither  of  whom,  for 
political  reasons,  particularly  desired  a  decisive  battle. 
Almost  simultaneously,  in  the  early  days  of  October, 
Bliicher  crossed  the  Elbe  at  W artenburg,  and  Bernadotte 
near  Wittenberg ;  while  Schwarzenberg,  with  the  mam 
army,  descended  from  the  Metal  Mountains.  At  Warten- 
berg  the  resistance  was  very  stubborn,  and  had  it  not 
been  for  the  wonderful  courage  and  perseverance  of  Gen¬ 
eral  York’s  corps,  the  attempt  would  have  failed.  This 
general,  as  usual,  had  demurred  at  his  orders.  “  It  is 
hard  to  bring  the  old  ^  uinb  ® 

Bliicher  said  of  him ;  “  but  once  there,  he  is  surpassed  by 
no  one.”  As  for  Napoleon,  his  first  feeling  on  seeing  the 
enemy  assume  the  offensive  was  one  of  satisfaction ;  so 
little  did  he  realize  the  desperateness  of  his  position  that 
he  determined  to  prevent  the  capture  of  Dresden,  and,  for 
that  purpose,  left  behind  him  thirty  thousand  men,  which, 
as  the  event  proved,  he  could  ill  afford  to  spare. 

Between  Bliicher  and  Bernadotte  the  friction  continued 
to  the  end;  but  old  Marshal  Forwards,  as  he  had  been 
called  since  the  battle  on  the  Katzbach, — whatever  violent 


THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION 


309 


I 

i 

' 

f 

»< 

expressions  he  might  have  used  in  private,  —  showed  the  Bliicher 
utmost  self-restraint.  When  the  Swedish  crown  prince 
objected  to  the  danger  of  the  position  near  Halle  that  Bernadotte‘ 
Bliicher  would  have  had  him  take,  the  latter  changed 
places  with  him ;  later,  when  still  greater  danger  threat¬ 
ened  him  in  his  new  position,  Bernadotte  had  the  assurance 
to  demand  to  be  put  back  in  his  original  place.  His  evi¬ 
dent  desire  to  keep  his  precious  Swedes  out  of  action  gave 
rise  to  one  of  the  most  remarkable  protests  that  has  ever 
been  penned:  on  October  15,  the  headquarters  of  the  Sile¬ 
sian  army  joined  with  the  headquarters  of  Bernadotte ’s 
own  army,  and  with  the  ministers  or  military  representa¬ 
tives  of  England,  Russia,  Austria,  and  Prussia  in  a  per¬ 
emptory  demand  “to  take  part  in  an  event  which  must 
decide  the  fate  of  Europe.”  It  was,  even  then,  too  late  to 
join  in  the  first  great  day  of  the  battle  of  the  nations, 
though  by  doing  so  York’s  devoted  corps  might  have 
been  saved  from  terrible  slaughter  at  Mockern.  It  must 
be  said  that  when,  on  October  18v  Bernadotte  did  at  last 
fall  into  line,  his  army  was  of  great  service,  completing  the 
iron  chain  that  was  drawn  so  closely  around  Napoleon. 

All  in  all,  the  fighting  on  that  first  day  of  Leipzig,  Octo-  The  three 
ber  16,  was  far  from  decisive ;  there  were  skirmishes  at  <*aysrhaRle 
Mockern,  to  the  northwest,  and  at  Connewitz  and  Wachau 
to  the  southeast.  Neither  in  the  totals  of  the  forces  en¬ 
gaged,  nor  in  the  separate  skirmishes,  was  there  a  great 
numerical  difference.  At  Wachau,  Napoleon  considered 
that  he  had  won  the  day,  and  ordered  that  the  bells  of 
Leipzig  should  ring  out  a  peal  of  triumph ;  he  sent  a  mes¬ 
sage  of  congratulation  to  his  ally,  the  king  of  Saxony,  who 
was  found  skulking  in  his  cellar  for  safety.  But  something 
more  than  a  half- victory  was  needed  to  extricate  the  caged 
lion  from  his  dangerous  position ;  for,  the  next  day,  the 
allies  were  reenforced  to  the  extent  of  nearly  one  hundred 

t 


310 


Horrors  of 
Leipzig. 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

thousand  men.  In  vain  Napoleon,  on  October  17,  attempted 
to  open  negotiations  for  peace ;  his  messenger  was  not  re¬ 
ceived.  On  October  18,  fell  the  great  decision.  The  allies 
pressed  closer  and  closer  around  Leipzig,  the  army  of 
Schwarzenberg  passing  over  the  field  of  Wachau,  where 
but  two  days  before  so  many  had  fallen.  The  corpses  lay 
there  unburied  still,  and  the  bones  crunched  as  the  heavy 
carts  and  cannon  passed  along,  t^the  midst  oj^hejgattle 

a  number  of  Saxon^oldieiO^e^^  the 

allies,  and,  as  theTTench  at  least  maintained,  decided  the 
fa£T~of  the  day.  They  were  received  with  no  enthusiasm 
and  were  relegated  to  the  rear.  That  night  and  the  next 
day,  Napoleon  carried  on  his  retreat,  in  the  course  of  which, 
prematurely,  the  bridge  on  the  Elster  was  blown  up,  leav¬ 
ing  some  twenty  thousand  to  become  prisoners  in  the 
hands  of  the  allies.  OfHh^French.  em^^’s^lasLhalf 
million  men 

the  BhmeT  Meanwhile,  the  Czar  and  the  king  of  Prussia 
rode~p7budty  into  Leipzig,  passing  without  a  greeting  the 
Saxon  king,  who  had  stationed  himself  bareheaded  to  re¬ 
ceive  them  at  his  palace  door.  In  the  market-place,  the 
Czar  was  seen  to  embrace  sturdy  old  Bllicher,  and  was 
heard  to  say,  “  You,  my  dear  general,  have  done  the  most; 

you  are  the  liberator  of  Germany.” 

The  battle  of  thejaJagng, had  been  fought  and  won,  but 
at  a  cost  to  strike  terror  into  the  hearts  of  the  victors. 
Strong  men  to  the  number  of  nearly  one  hundred  thou¬ 
sand-enough  to  people  a  great  city  — lay  dead  or 
wounded;  so  many  corpses  had  fallen  into  the  Elster 
that  the  current  was  turned  aside.  The  peasants  had  fled 
the  neighborhood  in  a  panic,  and  could3PtJmlpJn Jury¬ 
ing  the  dead;  the  bodies  were  left  in, great  n^ed^iles  to 
be  gnawed  by  dog  and  raven.  We  hear  oEl-ITAyounded 
placed  in  a  barn  and  then  forgotten;  of  20,000  more  without 


I 

'{ 

THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION  311 

il} 

bed  or  covering  of  any  kind ;  of  corpses  thrown  from  upper 
story  windows,  on  to  the  heaped-up  carts  below;  of  arms 
and  legs  seen  to  move  amid  the  sickening  mass;  of  their 
owners  mercifully  clubbed  into  quietude ;  of  steady  streams 
of  filth  and  blood  flowing  down  the  steps  of  the  improvised 
hospitals  into  the  streets. 

Yet,  terrible  as  this  all  was,  it  would  have  been  better 
in  the  end  if  the  victory  had  been  followed  up  with  more 
emphasis ;  it  would  have  been  perfectly  possible  to  have 
inflicted  such  ruin  on  this  army  that  the  campaign  of  1814 
could  never  have  been  fought.  But  disunion  reigned  in 
the  camp  of  the  allies.  Schwarzenberg  had  taken  but  few 
precautions  for  cutting  off  his  great  enemy’s  retreat; 
Russia  and  Prussia  wished  to  pursue  Napoleon  up  to  the 
walls  of  his  own  capital;  England  and  Austria  thought 
that  already  his  punishment  had  been  sufficient.  Metter- 
nich,  the  new  Austrian  minister,  was  afraid  the  balance  of 
power  would  be  overthrown  in  Europe  were  Napoleon  to 
be  completely  ruined;  he  mortally  dreaded  liberal  princi¬ 
ples,  and  was  opposed  to  the  Czar’s  Polish  plans.  It  was 
only  by  Stein’s  urgent  advice  that  the  war  was  continued 
at  all,  and,  even  then,  many  months  were  lost  in  slow  and 
purposeless  evolutions,  which  gave  Napoleon  the  needed 
time  for  rest.  At  the  battle  of  La  Rothiere,  Schwarzenberg, 
with  two-thirds  of  the  total  forces,  remained  inactive  while 
Bliicher  did  the  fighting.  Yet,  for  the  first  time  in  cen¬ 
turies,  a  French  army  was  beaten  on  French  soil  ;  for  the 
first  time,  too,  Napoleon  and  Bliicher  were  directly  pitted 
against  each  other.  The  former  was  so  completely  dis¬ 
couraged  that  he  consented  to  the  calling  of  the  Congress 
of  Chatillon. 

Austrian  negligence,  if  not  actual  Austrian  treason, 
robbed  Bliicher  of  all  his  advantage.  Schwarzenberg 
had  arranged  that  Wittgenstein’s  corps  should  cover  the 


Ji 

> 


The 

battle  of  La 
Rothiere. 


312 


Bllicher’s 
army 
in  great 
danger. 


Napoleon’s 
crest  rises. 


A  SHOUT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

country  between  the  right  bank  of  the  Seme  and  the  line 
of  march  of  the  Silesian  army,  but  then  obeyed  a  secret 
command  of  the  Austrian  emperor  to  remain  on  the  left 
bank  of  the  river,  lest  a  victory  of  the  allies  should  disturb 
the  proposed  negotiations  for  a  peace.  Napoleon,  in  con¬ 
sequence,  fell  upon  detached  corps  of  Blucher’s  all-too 
unsuspecting  army,  and  at  Montmirail  and  Chateau-Thierry 
inflicted  crushing  blows.  In  a  skirmish  near  Vauchamps 
the  field-marshal  himself,  Gneisenau,  Prince  Augustus, 
Kleist,  and  Grolmann  were  surprised,  and  on  the  point  o 
being  captured,  when  they  were  saved  by  the  presence  of 
mind  of  the  last-named,  who  organized  a  successful  rally 
of  the  exhausted  troops.  Old  Marshal  Forwards  had 
already  sought  death,  determined  never  to  be  taken  alive. 
All  that  brave  and  desperate  men  could  do  these  Prussians 
had  done:  “even  that  dumb  lean  Englishman,”  writes 
Treitschke,  “  who  was  wont  to  trot  by  Gneisenau  s  side, 
always  with  the  same  tiresome,  stiff  expression  of  coun¬ 
tenance,  lashing  the  air  with  his  stick  even  Hudson 
Lowe  could  hardly  find  words  enough  to  praise  the  leonine 
courage  of  these  ragged,  half-starved  heroes.” 

Blucher’s  army  was  reduced  to  such  a  level  that  Na¬ 
poleon  disdained  to  follow  it.  To  show  what  he  had  done, 
lie  sent  long  trains  of  captives  to  Paris  and  had  them 
marched  by  the  Vendome  Column.  These  Prussians  were 
the  most  hated  of  all  the  allies ;  it  was  they  who  were 
supposed  to  have  done  the  most  in  plundering  and  burn¬ 
ing  villages.  According  to  the  popular  Parisian  gibe  they 
were  les  plus  Mens,  worse  than  the  rustres  and  les  autre 
Mens.  The  old  national  pride  in  Napoleon,  so  nearly  ex¬ 
tinguished,  now  flamed  up  anew.  The  emperor  himself, 
humble  enough  but  shortly  before,  had  now  recovered  all  his 
assurance  and  spoke  of  returning  to  the  Vistula.  He  sent 
word  to  his  envoys  at  Chatillon  to  listen  to  no  proposals  oi 


THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION 


313 


the  allies.  He  looked  upon  the  latter  as  actually  beaten  : 
“  With  my  captives  I  am  not  in  the  habit  of  negotiating,” 
he  declared.  And,  indeed,  at  this  very  time  the  different 
powers  were  quarrelling  so  fiercely,  that  Schwarzenberg 
had  entered  into  correspondence  with  the  French,  and 
was  already  withdrawing  his  troops,  when  the  king  of 
Prussia  in  person  induced  him  to  countermand  the  order. 

As  had  happened  before  in  Silesia  and  at  Leipzig,  it 
was  Bliicher’s  energy  that  stemmed  the  ebbing  tide. 
He  grasped  at  a  suggestion  of  Grolmann’s,  that  an  end 
should  be  put  to  all  this  disorder  by  leaving  the  army 
of  Schwarzenberg  to  its  own  devices,  marching  north  to 
unite  with  the  corps  of  Bulow  and  of  Wintzingerode,  — 
which  were  advancing  from  Belgium,  —  and  then  descend¬ 
ing  in  a  straight  line  upon  Paris.  Even  before  the  grudg¬ 
ing  consent  of  the  allied  sovereigns  could  reach  him,  his 
army,  rested  and  reenforced,  was  on  the  march,  with 
Napoleon  in  pursuit.  After  the  latter’s  departure,  Fred¬ 
erick  William  fairly  forced  Schwarzenberg,  who  had 
fought  no  engagement  since  entering  France,  to  take 
part  in  a  battle  at  Bar-sur-Aube ;  at  his  father’s  side  the 
future  emperor,  William  I.,  a  boy  of  seventeen,  rode  into 
the  first  military  action  of  his  life,  and  acquitted  himself 
with  distinction,  inaugurating  his  glorious  record  of  vic¬ 
tories  untarnished  by  defeats. 

When  Blucher  joined  forces  with  Bulow,  the  latter  was 
horrified  at  the  wretched  appearance  of  the  much-tried 
troops.  But  at  Laon,  where  Napoleon  at  once  attacked 
them,  and  where  the  battle  was  fought  in  the  darkness  of 
the  night,  a  signal  victory  was  gained.  It  is  true,  dis¬ 
cords  like  those  before  the  battle  on  the  Katzbach  pre¬ 
vented  pursuit,  and  robbed  the  victory  of  much  of  its 
importance.  Blucher  had  fallen  sick  from  over-exertion, 
and  sat  in  a  dark  room  a  prey  to  delusions ;  it  was  with 

j 


Bar-sur- 

Aube. 


Bliicher’s 
march  on 
Paris. 


314 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


difficulty  that  he  was  prevented,  in  the  very  moment  of 
his  triumph,  from  laying  down  the  command.  York, 
Kleist,  and  Billow  refused  to  obey  Gneisenau;  and  the 
first-named  threatened  to  leave  the  army.  Gneisenau 
himself  was  afraid  that,  after  such  constant  fighting,  by 
the  time  they  reached  Paris  there  would  be  no  Prussian 
army  left,  and  that  the  Austrians  would  be  able  to  twist 
the  terms  of  peace  to  suit  their  own  needs. 

But  an  unsatisfactory  answer  of  Napoleon  s  to  an  Aus¬ 
trian  ultimatum,  infused  new  unity  into  the  army  of  the 
allies ;  it  was  too  apparent  that  nothing  wus_to_be  game 
by  sparin Chatillon  was 
abruptly  closed.  The  great  army  set  out  for  Pans,  while 
Napoleon  tried  the  desperate  manoeuvre  of  frightening  its 
leaders  by  cutting  off  their  line  of  retreat.  With  eighteen 
thousand  men  he  expected,  thus,  to  paralyze  the  action  of 
more  than  one  hundred  thousand.  The  Czar  almost  fell 
into  his  trap,  consenting  finally,  however,  to  detach  a  small 
force  of  ten  thousand  to  keep  the  French  emperor  in  check, 
while,  with  the  rest,  the  union  was  made  with  Blucher’s 
army.  A  French  division  that  stood  in  the  way  at  La  FSre 
Champenoise  was  cut  to  pieces  with  horrible  butchery.  One 
last  struggle  before  Paris  with  Marmont  s  and  Mortiers 
corps,  where  the  combatants  penetrated  to  the  Bois  de  Vin¬ 
cennes,  to  Pere  la  Chaise  cemetery,  and  to  the  hill  of  Mont¬ 
martre,  ended  the  French  resistance;  Bliicher  had  looked 
on,  having  donned  a  woman’s  hat  and  veil  to  protect  his 
eyes,  which  were  badly  inflamed,  and  thus,  to  the  very  last, 
had  remained  the  central  figure  in  the  campaign.  The  fall 
of  Paris  meant,  that  the  one  hundred  and  seventy  thou- 
sandTrenchmen  left  in  German  fortresses  must  wait  in 
vain  for  relief;  and,  indeed,  in  the  course  of  the  winter 
and  spring,  garrison  after  garrison  surrendered. 

In  Paris  itself,  the  spell  of  Napoleon’s  ascendency  was 


THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION 


315 


; 

r J 

\  1 

pj 

broken,  and  the  day  of  reckoning  had  come  for  the  millions 
of  stout  lives  sacrificed  to  one  man’s  ambition.  The  crowd 
surged  around  the  V endftme  Column,  eager  to  tear  down 
the  image^  ofTts~laIIeii  emperor.  Officers  of  the  national 
guard  tied  the  star  of  the  Legion  of  Honor  to  the  tails  of 
their  horses ;  and  many  displayed  the  white  cockade  of  the 
Bourbons.  The  allies  were  greeted  as  deliverers,  and 
Madame  de  Stael  relates,  that  Frederick  William  was  aston¬ 
ished  at  finding  what  a  pleasure  it  was  to  these  people  to 
be  conquered.  The  handsome  Czar  was  grossly  flattered 
by  all  kinds  of  persons  :  the  head  of  a  madhouse  for 
females  one  day  told  him  that,  since  his  entry  into  the  city, 
the  number  of  those  who  had  gone  insane  from  unrequited 
affection  had  greatly  increased.  In  consequence  of  all  this 
friendliness,  the  terms  imposed  by  the  allies  were  far  too 
lenient;  and  PrussiaTwas  looked  upon  as  something  of  a  mar¬ 
plot  for  demanding  sterner  measures.  When  Louis  XVIII. 
came  in,  he  took  the  attitude  of  rightful  ruler,  and  in  his 
own  palace,  as  the  most  august  prince  of  Christendom,  de¬ 
manded  precedence  over  the  three  monarchs  who  had  just 
regained  him  his  throne.  France,  on  which  no  indemnity 
was  imposed,  was  given  all  of  Alsace  and  a  million  more 
inhabitants  than  she  possessed  in  1789.  Prussia,  which  had 
borne  the  brunt  of  the  war,  could  not  even  obtain  payment 
for  the  unjust  contributions  that  had  been  imposed  upon 
her  from  1808  to  1812  ;  and  it  was  with  difficulty  that  she 
regained  possession  of  the  sword  of  Frederick  the  Great, 
and  the  figure  of  Victory,  with  her  four  great  horses,  that 
had  been  taken  from  the  Brandenburg  gate.  The  return  of 
the  latter  work  of  art,  indeed,  was  a  tangible  proof  of  liber¬ 
ation,  and  the  whole  city  of  Berlin  streamed  out  to  meet 
the  great  wooden  chest  as  it  was  drawn  by  twenty  horses 
along  the  Charlottenburg  Chauss^e. 

But  the  worst  act  of  folly  on  the  part  of  the  allies,  was 

u 


The  allies 
in  Paris. 


316 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  calling 
of  the  Con¬ 
gress  of 
Vienna. 


The 

congress 

dances. 


to  leave  Nap.Ql£oa^a^eisdgn-^)iin^-of--Eilliai5  witb-thu Ms* 

of  Emperor,  with  a  retiniie  of  officers,  and  with  a  standing 
a.jmy  of  f our-  hundred  men . 

In  the  moment  of  victory,  ^congress  had  been  called  to 
meet  at  Vienna  for  the  sake  of  making  changes  in  the  map 
of  Europe  such  as  had  not  been  known  since  the  Peace  of 
Westphalia  ;  there  was  scarcely  a  country  the  boundaries 
of  which  were  not  to  be  fundamentally  altered.  The  brill¬ 
iancy  of  the  assembly  corresponded  to  the  importance  of 
the  occasion ;  and  the  Turkish  Sultan  was  the  only  Euro¬ 
pean  potentate  who  was  not  represented.  Even  France 
was  allowed  to  send  Talleyrand,  the  famous  turncoat,  who 
had  sacrificed  onthe  altar  of  liberty  at  the  feast  of  brother¬ 
hood  on  the  Champ  de  Mars,  had  served  Napoleon  in  the 
days  of  his  glory,  had  directed  the  compensation  of  the 
servile  German  princes,  and  who  now  came  as  envoy  of 
the  Bourbon  king ;  wily  and  clever  to  the  last  degree,  he 
took  such  advantage  of  the  dissensions  of  other  powers  that 
at  times  his  single  voice  was  almost  decisive. 

Since  the  Council  of  Constance  there  had  been  no  such 
assembly  as  this  great  congress,  where  for  a  period  of  nine 
months  the  fate  of  nations  was  discussed.  It  was  the  policy 
of  the  Emneror  Francis  to  playihamrt  of  genial  hogt;  and 
he  expended  in  all  some  sixteen  million  guldens  on  his  vari¬ 
ous  entertainments.  Balls  and  masquerades,  card  parties 
and  exhibitions  of  tableaux  vivants,  followed  each  other  in 
quick  succession.  Francis  reaped  his  reward,  for  some  of 
the  most  important  business  of  the  council  was  transacted 
on  such  occasions.  “  At  a  ball,”  writes  a  contemporary, 
“kingdoms  were  enlarged  or  sliced  up,  at  a  dinner  an 
indemnity  granted,  a  constitution  sketched  while  hunting ; 
occasionally  a  bon  mot  or  a  witty  idea  brought  about  an 
agreement  where  conferences  and  notes  had  failed.  It 
was  not  quite  true,  therefore,  that  remark  of  witty  old 


THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION 


317 


Prince  de  Ligne  :  uLe  congres  dance ,  mats  ne  marche  pas.” 
It  was  said  of  Metternich  that  he  understood  most  admira¬ 
bly  how  to  entertain  a  foreign  diplomat  and  show  him  most 
enchanting  friendliness,  when  all  the  time  he  was  prepar¬ 
ing  a  fatal  blow.  Among  the  other  attractions  of  Vienna 
in  those  days,  was  a  concert  given  by  Beethoven,  for  which 
the  oldiskQcMdng  of  composers  sent  personal  invitations 
to  all  the  great  people.  It  is  worthy  of  note,  that  ques¬ 
tions  of  precedence  at  this  congress  played  but  a  very  little 
part;  important  acts  were  signed  in  alphabetical  order,  or 
else,  to  use  a  German  term,  in  hunter  Reilie ,  or  by  rotation. 


In  addition  to  general  debates  on  international  law,  on 
the  rules  of  navigation,  on  slavery,  thyeecardinhl  matters — 
known  as  the  Polish.  Saxon,  and  German  questions — occu- 
pied  the  time.  The  Czar  wished  to  abrogate  the  former 
partitions  of  Poland  and  reestablish  that  power  with  him¬ 
self  as  king,  andTwith  liberal  institutions.  He  considered 
that~the^Empress  Catherine  had  committed  a  crime  in 
dividing  Poland;  but,  as  Seeley  remarks,  the  only  crime 
for  which  Alexander  really  blamed  her,  was  that  of  allow¬ 
ing  others  to  share  her  booty.  Stein,  as  well  as  other 
patriots,  were  much  opposed  to  these  Polish  plans  ;  but 
here  Frederick  William~~asserted  himself  and  committed 
what  has  been  rightly  called  the  most  independent  and 
fortunate  act  of  his  whole  reign.  He  told  the  Czar  that  he 
might  have  the  greater  part  of  Prussian  Poland  ;  he  did 
not  tell  ElmTEatthese 'vast  tracts,  peopled  by  an  alien  race, 
had  always  been  to  him  more  of  a  burden  than  a  benefit. 

In  this  way,  one  great  dispute  was  ended,  but  at  the 
same  time  an  infinitely  greater  one  begun.  If  Russiajwas 
to  have  the  Polish  provinces,  where  was  Prussia  to  find 
indemnttyT~'^The  "most  obvious  answer  was,  in  Saxony  — 
an  adjoining,  Protestant,  conquered  country,  whose  king 
had  acted  in  a  despicable  manner.  Anticipating  no  oppo- 


The  Polish 
question. 


The  Saxon 
question 
and  Talley 
rand’s 
diplomacy. 


318 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


sitfon,  Frederick  William  had  the  king  sent  off  to  Berlin 
and  a  Prussian  administrator  put  in  his  place.  But  of 
all  the  mainsprings  of  action  during  these  excited  days, 
Austrian  jealousy  of  Prussia  was  among  the  foremost ;  by 

annexing  SaxonyvBli^jli^^ffR^^Ya^J^11^^Pus^^:ier  k°un 
daries  right  up  to  the  Bohemianfrontier.  There  was  no 
length  to  which  the  eniperor  would  not  go  to  prevent  such 
a  contingency  —  to  which  England  also  was  opposed ;  and 
in  the  background  was  the  tempter,  Talleyrand,  whose  chief 
argument  was,  that  Prussia  was  acting  counter  to  the  whole 
principle  on  which  the  war  against  Napoleon  had  been 
waged  — the  principle  of  legitimacy;  it  was  Napoleonic, 
not  legitimistic,  to  depose  the  king  of  Saxony.  It  mat¬ 
tered  little  that  Talleyrand’s  premises  were  utterly  wrong  ; 
that  war  had  been  waged  against  Napoleon  for  far  other 
reasons  than  that  he  was  not  legitimate  ruler  ;  that  the 
king  of  Saxony,  as  king  at  least,  was  even  less  legitimate 
than  his  imperial  creator.  The  wily  T  renchman  s  absurd 
reasonings  fell  on  willing  ears ;  his  influence  grew  from 
day  to  day,  and  on  January  3,  1815,was  formed  the  most 
preposterous  of  all  alliances,  that  ofTlngland  anTWustria 
witfT~the  very  power  against  w hich  Th^y^had^jugiLdieeR 
so  bit^l^"^rrin^:'"-Foi^ix^ays,  until  the  English  Par¬ 
liament  repudiated  the  action  of  its  minister,  there  was 
imminent  danger  of  an  outbreak.  The  Czar  knew  noth¬ 
ing  of  what  had  occurred  until  Napoleon,  having  re¬ 
turned  from  Elba,  and  finding  the  treaty  of  alliance  in 
Louis  XVIII. ’s  desk,  sent  it  to  him  in  order  to  disgust 
him  with  his  allies. 

After  agitating  Europe  for  four  months,  the  Saxon  ques- 
tion  was  settled  by  compromise  ;  Frederick.Augli^sj^as 

shorfVoF"haIT~hr»lluimhron^y-^uVleiLwithAihe-xffher^half 

and  with  his  royal  title.  In  order  to  complete  Prussia’s 
indemnity,  the  Czar  relinquished  Thornjmff  JCtazjg ;  while 


THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION 


319 


Aix,  Cologne,  Coblenz,  and  other  territory  on  the  left 
bank~oI  the  Rhine  brought  her  boundaries  up  to  almost 
their  extent  in  18Q&  and  her  population  to  half  a  million 
more  A~TEr  owing  into  the  scale  the  wealth  and  industry  of 
these  provinces,  her  gain  was  infinite ;  while  her  proximity 
to  France  made  her  the  natural  guardian  of  German  inter¬ 
ests  in  that  direction. 

Talleyrand’s  triumph  was  one  day  to  cost  his  country  Nagoleon’s 
dear;  but  for  the  moment  he  had  managed  to  interfere  sue-  ^tnioLfrom 
cessfully  in  German  affairs ;  and  there  is  no  knowing  what 
he  might  still  have  accomplished,  had  it  not  been  for 
Napoleon’s  return.  The  whole  congress  was  thrown  into 
confusion,  and  into  a  transport  of  excitement,  by  the  news 
of  that  dramatic  landing  at  Antibes,  —  of  the  Bourbon 
troops,  which  at  sight  of  their  old  commander  lost  all 
control  of  themselves,  and  joined  his  standard;  of  the- entry 
into  Paris,  the  reinstatement  in  power,  the  expulsion  of 
Louis  XVIII.,  and  the  granting  of  a  new  constitution. 

The  man  for  wliom  so  many  Frenchmen  had  already  died 
was  able  to  secure  200,000  new  victims,  and  to  organize 
them  with  a  skill  and  rapidity  that  even  he  had  never 
equalled.  He  ordered,  besides,  the  levee  en  masse  ;  which 
called  out  the  whole  male  population  of  France.  The 
congress--atppped  all  business,  and  ^qlmnnl3L-4ironounced 
Napol^ojn.„an._outiaw~and  an  enemy  of  mankind.  His 
envoys  were  not  received.  The~powers ^agreed  to  fur¬ 
nish  each  150,000  men;  and  four  great  armies,  —  under 
Wellington,  Blucher7~Schwarzenberg,  and  the  Czar,— 
prepared"  to  invade  F ranee ;  the  two  former  by  way  of 
Belgium,  the  two  latter  by  crossing  the  middle  Rhine. 

Bliicher  met  the  French  at  Ligny,  and  once  more  and  Bliicher  at 
for  the  Inst  time  an  army  of  Napoleon  conquered-auLfinemy,  Waterlo°- 
and  even  one  that  was  its  superior  in  numbers.  The  Prus¬ 
sians  lost  some  12,000  in  dead  and  wounded.  At  the  same 


320 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


time,  Wellington  won  tlie  day  at  Quatrebras;  and  then 
moved  to  the  field  near  Brussels  where  was  fought  the 
most  famous  battle  of  modern  times.  Blticher  was  not 
far  from  right  when  he  wrote  from  Waterloo,  44  Our  vic¬ 
tory  is  the  most  complete  that  has  ever  been  gained ;  ”  or 
Gneisenau  when  he  declared  that  the  enemy  was  anni¬ 
hilated  as  never  an  enemy  before.  If  the  brunt  of  the 
fighting  had  been  done  by  the  English,  the  Prussians  had 
arrived  at  a  moment  so  critical  as  to  make  it  doubtful 
what  might  have  happened  had  they  come  an  hour  later. 
Bliicher’s  march  from  Ligny  had  been  a  wonderful  achieve¬ 
ment;  when  Wellington  sent  to  ask  him  for  a  single 
corps  he  had  answered  proudly  that  he  would  be  present, 
not  with  a  corps,  but  with  his  whole  army.  On  the  day 
after  his  defeat,  without  pausing  for  rest,  and  suffering 
personally  from  the  effects  of  a  fall  from  his  horse,  he  had 
proceeded  twelve  miles  to  Wavre.  On  the  day  following, 
the  famous  June  18,  his  half-fed  troops  had  hurried  for 
eight  hours  through  rain  and  mud  before  plunging  into 
the  thick  of  battle.  When  the  men  despaired  and  declared 
that  they  could  go%no  further,  the  determined  old  man 
had  said  to  them  :  44  Boys,  we  must !  I  have  pledged  my 
word  to  my  brother  Wellington,  and  you  would  not  have 
me  break  it!”  The  brave  English  commander,  in  the 
meantime,  having  withstood  for  hours  the  most  murderous 
fire  of  which  history  bears  record,  when  approached  by 
Lord  Hill,  and  asked  his  intentions,  had  answered  simply: 
44 Hold  fast  to  the  last  man!”  Later,  he  was  heard  to 
murmur  to  himself:  44  Bliicher  —  or  night!  ” 

The  question  as  to  the  relative  merits  of  the  achieve¬ 
ments  of  these  two  commanders  has  much  agitated  pos¬ 
terity;  it  did  not  greatly  trouble  the  persons  most 
concerned.  Wellington,  in  his  formal  despatch,  ascribed 
the  fortunate  conclusion  of  the  day  to  Bliicher’s  advent; 


THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION 


321 


while  the  Prussian  general’s  own  son  wrote  from  the  scene 
of  battle,  “  F ather  Bliicher  embraced  W ellington  in  such 
a  hearty  manner  that  everybody  present  said  it  was  the 
most  affecting  scene  imaginable.” 

1  or  the  first  time  in  his  career,  Na;paLaon  was  personally  The  flight 
forced  to  take  to  mad  flight;  as  he  sprang  from  his  car-  from~^ 
riage,  defending  himself  with  his  pistol,  he  left  behind  him  ^erIo°- 
his  hat,  sword,  and  field-glass,  which  fell  into  Blucher’s 
hands.  The  ^carnage  itself,  which  Bliicher  sent  to  his 
wife  as  a  trophy,  was  found  stuffed  with  valuables  ;  dia¬ 
mond^  the  size  of  peas  were  thrown  round  among  the 
soldiersTand  ~soIc[  for  the  immediate  enjoyment  of  a  few 
francs.  Txheisenau  carried  off  the  fallen  emperor’s  seal. 

The  work  of  pursuit  was  left  to  the  Prussians,  who,  wearied 
though  they  were,  kept  up  the  chase  for  five  hours;  after 
which  a  single  drummer  mounted  on  a  horse  managed  to 
keep  thousands  in  front  of  him  in  a  state  of  panic. 

The  carnage  at  Waterloo,  if  not  equal  to  that  at  Leipzig, 
was  yet  a  worthy  holocaust  even  to  the  fallen  greatness  of 
a  Napoleon.  The  losses  of  the  allies  were  21,400,  those  of 
the  French,  including  prisoners,  25,000.  Of  heartrending 
scenes  there  was  no  end.  An  English  resident  of  Brussels 
has  recorded  how  a  transport  wagon  stopped  before  his 
door,  and  how,  when  he  went  to  carry  nourishment,  he 
found  the  wagon  filled,  exclusively,  with  men  who  had  lost 
all  four  of  their  limbs. 

With  Napoleon  once  more  defeated,  forced  to  abdicate  The  second 
by  his  own  Parliament,  and  sent  off  to  eat  his  heart  out  Peace  of 
on  his  desolate  island  near  the  equator,  a  second  Peace  of  Pans* 
Paris  wasarranged  with  France  which  was  npt_so  favorable 
to^tfa5fjiower_  as  _  the  first.  It  is  true,  in  spite  of  the  pro¬ 
tests  of  Prussia,  —  which  government  would  gladly  have 
seen  its  enemy  deprived  of  Alsace  and  Lorraine, — the  boun- 


daries  of  .1792  were  left  to  the  ^Bourbon  dynasty;  but~tlils 

VOL.  II  —  T  "" 


322 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  settle¬ 
ment  of  the 
German 
question  at 
the  Con¬ 
gress  of 
Vienna. 


Short¬ 
comings  of 
the  “  Act 
of  Confed¬ 
eration.” 


time  an  indemnity  was  required,  the  stolen  works  of  art  were 
to  be  restored  to  the  various  capitals,  while  the  land  was 
to  support  a  force  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  men 
until  the  terms  of  peace  should  have  been  carried  out. 

With  the  sudden  storm-cloud  thus  dispersed,  the  Con¬ 
gress  of  Vienna  was  able  to  renew  its  deliberations  and  to 
embody  in  its  protocol,  or  final  act,  some  one  hundred  and 
eighty  measures  passed.  The  most  important  question  of 
all,  the  reconstruction  of  GermanyTwas  solved  in  the  least 
satWactory ^iTrierpand'  onlr^  nine  different  schemes 
had  been  brought  forward.  /.One  was,  to  make  Stein  presi¬ 
dent  over  kings  and  jemperor ;  another,  to  have  Austria 
nominal  head,  but  Prussia  to  control^be^rmies.  Stein 
himself  had  desired  an  empire  with  Austria  at  its  head, 
but  the  Emperor  Francis  had  refused  ;  moreover  the  minor 
states  were  unwilling  to  give  up  one  jot  or  tittle  of  their 
sovereignty.  The  rcault  was  the  passing-of .  a  mere.  Act  of 
Conf ederation,__with  Austria  as  presiding  power  and  with 

a  Diet  thalwagj^nuad^  JThe 

different  states  were  left  with  much  independence  and 
might  form  their  own  alliances;  they  were  all  to  send 
delegates  to  Frankfort ;  and  it  was  one  of  the  peculiarities 
of  this  political  monstrosity,  that  a  combination  of  the  small 
states,  representing  one-sixth  of  the  population  of  Germany, 
could  nearly  doubly  outvote  the  seven  larger  states,  with 
the  remaining  five-sixths. 

Nor  was  this  the  worst:  Saxony  and  Bavaria  proved 
themselves, .far  more  dangerous— as  friends._tliaiT  they  had 
ever  been  as  enemies ;  the  former  managed,  to  pass  a 
motion  that  no  change  should  be  made  in  this  most  in¬ 
complete,  of  ■  all  constitutions,  save  by  unanimous  vote; 
the  old  liberum  veto  of  the  Polish  diets  was  revived  for  the 
benefit  of  the  German  princes.  And  Bav aria  blocked  all 
proceedings,  Until  an  .act  providing  for  a  general  federal 


THE  WAR  OF  LIBERATION 


323 


council  had  been  let  fall.  As  a  result  there  was  no  cen¬ 
tral  authority  with  any  real  coercive  power.  TheJ)iet  of 
Frankfort  had  no  army  andTnoTundsT  and-  its  only  means 
of  punishing  a  recalcitrant  state  was  to  vote  federal  exe¬ 
cution,  —  which  meant  that  individual  states  were  to  be 
deputed  to  exercise  armed  pressure.  The  net  result  of  all 
these  wars  for  the  internal  affairs  of  Germany,  was  a  worse 
state  of  things  than  before ;  but  the  very  weaknesses  of 
this  German  confederation  were  to  conduce  to  the  aggran¬ 
dizement  of  Prussia  and  lead  to  her  final  triumph. 


CHAPTER  VIII 


The 

Metternich 

policy. 


THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  CONSTITUTIONAL  GOVERNMENT 
AND  THE  REVOLUTION  OF  1848 

Literature:  Treitschke’s  work  extends  to  1847,  but  is  too  detailed 
for  the  purposes  of  the  ordinary  student.  Stern,  Geschichte  Europa's, 
1815-71,  is  also  incomplete,  but  promises  to  be  a  clear  and  forcible  state¬ 
ment  of  facts.  Constantin  Bulle,  Geschichte  der  neuesten  Zeit ,  is  excel¬ 
lent.  Biedermann,  who  was  in  the  thick  of  the  constitutional  struggle  in 
1848,  has  left  two  well-written  and  reliable  works,  25  Jahre  deutscher 
Geschichte ,  1815-40,  and  30  Jahre  deutscher  Geschichte ,  1840-70.  Of 
contemporary  memoirs,  those  embodied  in  Seeley’s  Life  of  Arndt  are 
most  interesting.  See,  also,  the  Life  of  Bunsen,  edited  by  his  widow, 
and  Bunsen’s  Correspondence  with  Frederick  William,  edited  by  Leo¬ 
pold  von  Ranke.  The  most  complete  history  of  the  Revolution  of  1848  is 
that  by  Hans  Blum.  See,  also,  Fyffe’s  Modern  Europe. 

The  three  monarchs  who  at  last,  by  the  aid  of  England, 
succeeded  in  overthrowing  Napoleon  were  in  reality  men 
of  only  mediocre  ability.  Francis  of  Austria  was  the  in¬ 
carnation  of  selfishness  and  narrow-mindedness.  From 
the  first  he  had  scented  danger  to  himself  in  the  popular 
nature  of  the  uprising  in  Prussia,  for  liberal  ideas  of 
every  kind  were  a  bugbear  to  him.  “  Omnes  mundus  stul- 
tizat  et  vult  habere  novas  constitutiones ,”  “  The  whole  world 
is  foolish  and  wants  new  constitutions,”  he  cried  angrily, 
in  bad  Latin,  to  a  delegation  of  Hungarians.  Hand  in 
hand  with  Metternich,  a  minister  after  his  own  heart,  he 
inaugurated  a  system  of  persistent  political  repression 
that  reminds  one  of  the  religious  tyranny  of  his  hi 
ancestors.  Under  the  remainder  of  his  ov 
under  that  of  his  son,  enlightenment  was  dy  crushed 

out  in  Austria.  The  votaries  of  literate  nd  art  went 

324 


y 


r 


STRUGGLE  FOR  CONSTITUTIONAL  GOVERNMENT  325 

elsewhere,  and  even  the  teachings  of  learned  scientists 
were  subjected  to  rigid  censorship.  A  copy  of  Copernicus, 
De  revolutiombus  orbium  eeleatium,  was  confiscated  in  1848 
because  of  the  dangerous  sound  of  its  title. 

The  best  and  most  intelligent  of  the  trio  was  doubtless 
the  Czar  Alexander,  in  spite  of  his  fickleness  and  vanity. 

e  asserted  himself  on  all  occasions  and  posed  everywhere 
as  "he  real  liberator  of  Germany,  having  come  to  consider 
himselt  an  instrument  chosen  by  Providence  for  the  resto¬ 
ration  of  law  and  order.  But  his  mind  was  no  better 
balanced  than  in  those  early  days,  when  he  had  sworn 
such  loyalty  to  Prussia,  only  to  desert  her  at  Tilsit  •  or 
when,  in  reality  autocrat  of  autocrats,  he  dreamed  of’ be¬ 
coming  constitutional  king  of  Poland.  After  the  victories 
over  Napoleon,  he  developed  a  religious  enthusiasm,  dis- 
cussed  dogmas  and  methods  of  doing  penance  with  Frau 
von  Krudener  at  Paris,  and,  at  last,  surprised  his  royal 
allies  by  laying  before  them  the  draft  of  a  treaty,  which 
provided  nothing  less  than  that  the  world  should  hence¬ 
forward  be  ruled  by  the  principles  of  common  Christian 
brotherhood.  A  new  alliance  is  to  be  formed,  the  writing 
declares,  founded  on  the  glorious  truths  of  the  religion  of 
the  Divine  Saviour;  the  guiding  threads  of  policy  are  to 
be  the  precepts  of  this  same  religion,  —  justice,  love,  and 
peace ;  the  monarchs  are  to  regard  themselves  as  brothers, 
as  fathers  of  their  people,  as  “  Plenipotentiaries  of  Provi¬ 
dence,”  as  rulers  over  three  branches  of  one  and  the  same 
people  ;  the  nations  are  exhorted  to  stand  fast  in  the  prin¬ 
ciples  taught  by  the  Saviour ;  and  all  powers  that  do  so 
shall  be  worthy  of  reception  into  this  Holy  Alliance. 
Frederick  William  signed  at  once.  Francis  and  Metter- 
nich,  with  scorn  and  mockery  in  their  hearts,  followed 
suit  for  fear  of  offending  the  Czar.  Wellington  refused, 
on  the  part  of  England,  as  did  also  the  Pope,  who  sent 


The  Holy 
Alliance. 


326 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


A  con¬ 
stitution 


word  that  “from  time  immemorial  he  had  been  in  pos¬ 
session  of  Christian  truth  and  needed  no  new  interpre¬ 
tation  of  the  same.”  The  smaller  powers  ol  Europe  a 
handed  in  their  allegiance  ;  while  the  Sultan  of  ur  ey, 
who  scented  in  this  outburst  of  Christian  sentiment  the 
preliminaries  of  a  crusade  against  himself,  had  to  be  paci¬ 
fied  by  an  express  declaration  to  the  contrary  on  the  part 
of  Alexander.  The  chief  trouble  with  the  Holy  Alliance 
was,  that  it  regarded  the  people  as  senseless  to  be 

driven  by  whatever  measures  the  allied  rulers  mig  sug¬ 
gest.  The  treaty  proved  practically  to  be  a  dead  letter ; 
nor  was  even  the  brotherly  concord  of  long  duration. 
The  Holy  Alliance  is  responsible  in  a  measure  for  the 
unanimity  of  the  powers  in  the  repression  of  liberal  ideas. 
But  liberal  ideas  were  in  the  air  now,  and  the  strivings 
solution  of  the  German  people,  for  a  generation  to  come,  were  to 
promised  by  towar(|  their  realization.  -The  first  draft  of  an  artic  e 

we,reriCm  in  the  protocol  of  the  Congress  of  Vienna  had  read :  “  In 
M  ilham  III.  ‘tate  of  the  German  Confederation  there  shall  be 

a  constitution  in  favor  of  the  local  estates”;  but,  y 
Austrian  influence,  the  “  shall  ”  had  been  changed  to  a 
feeble  “  will,”  and  no  punishment  placed  on  disregarded 
the  provision.  While  the  Congress  of  Vienna  was  still 
in  session,  —  at  a  time  when  there  was  immediate  need  of 
raising  a  new  army  on  account  of  Napoleon  s  return,  — 
Frederick  William  had  promised  a  constitution  to  his 
Prussians.  As  a  pledge  of  his  confidence  in  the  nation, 
there  was  to  be  established  a  sort  of  parliament.  Repre¬ 
sentatives  appointed  by  the  local  assemblies  of  the  estates 
were  to  meet  at  Berlin;  but  they  were  to  deliberate 
and  advise,  not  to  vote.  Small  as  these  concessions  were, 
they  were  never  fulfilled.  Frederick  William  could  not 
trust  his  five  and  a  half  million  new  subjects,  who  had 
belonged  to  as  many  as  a  hundred  different  states,  to 


STRUGGLE  FOR  CONSTITUTIONAL  GOVERNMENT  327 


exalt  the  Prussian  monarchy:  he  was  seized  with  the 
same  dread  of  an  all-engulfing'  liberalism  which  filled  his 
companions  of  the  Holy  Alliance.  It  was  two  years 
before  the  necessary  commission  was  instructed  to  take 
the  matter  in  hand ;  six  years  more  before  the  preliminary 
local  assemblies  were  organized  on  a  common  basis.  Not 
until  seven  years  after  Frederick  William’s  death,  was  a 
united  Diet  to  be  called  to  Berlin ;  and  then  it  was  to  be 
of  no  use,  as  the  country  was  on  the  brink  of  revolution. 
In  other  states  of  Germany,  the  course  of  events  was 
similar.  In  1818,  the  only  sovereigns  who  had  granted 
constitutions,  were  Bavaria,  Baden,  and  the  Grand  Duke 
of  W eimar ;  the  latter  the  patron  of  Goethe  and  lord  of 
the  famous  Wartburg. 

That  the  progress  of  liberal  institutions  was  not  more 
rapid,  is  largely  owing  to  the  influence  of  the  Austrian 
chancellor  who,  for  nearly  a  generation,  stood  over  the 
kings  of  Europe,  and  forced  them  into  the  narrow  path 
of  his  own  policy.  The  name  of  Metternich  has  become 
a  synonym  for  reaction  and  conservatism.  Not  content 
with  surrounding  Austria  by  a  Chinese  wall,  he  made  it 
his  life-work  to  prevent  Prussia  and  other  German  states 
from  introducing  constitutional  government ;  well  knowing 
that,  if  the  spirit  of  nationality  should  invade  the  many- 
tongued  Austrian  dependencies,  there  would  be  an  end  of 
the  recently  formed  empire.  Over  the  king  of  Prussia, 
he  not  only  exercised  the  ascendency  of  a  stronger  and 
more  determined  mind  —  making  use  of  every  little  popu¬ 
lar  disturbance,  every  outspoken  paragraph  of  the  news- 
leaves,  to  terrify  the  timid  ruler — ,  but  he  even  threatened 
to  withdraw  from  the  Holy  Alliance,  should  Frederick 
William  refuse  to  take  steps  against  the  progress  of 
revolution. 

On  the  brilliant  period  of  the  war  of  liberation,  was 


Metternich 
opposed  to 
liberal  in¬ 
stitutions. 


Ingratitude 
of  Fred¬ 
erick  Will¬ 
iam  III. 


The  found¬ 
ing  of  the 
Burschen- 
schaft. 


328  A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

following  one  of  petty  suspicion  and  persecution.  The 
days  of  absolute  monarchy  were  counted,  but  the  sover¬ 
eigns  could  not  and  would  not  accept  their  doom. 

All  the  wonderful  services  rendered  to  him  by  his  people, 
all  the  blood  shed  in  war  by  men  of  peace,  all  the  sacri¬ 
fices  made  to  raise  the  necessary  funds,  were  now  for¬ 
gotten  by  the  Prussian  king  ;  and  he  gave  full  credence  to 
Metternich’s  devilish  insinuations  that  the  land  was  seeth¬ 
ing  with  sedition,  concerned  in  which,  were  men  like 
Arndt  and  Jahn.  When  Councillor  Schmalz,  the  rector 
of  the  Berlin  University,  wrote  an  elaborate  pamphlet 
to  prove  that  the  uprising  of  1813  had  not  been  the  work 
of  the  people,  but  that  the  latter  had  simply  streamed  to¬ 
gether  at  the  king’s  summons  as  firemen  obey  an  alarm  bell : 
Frederick  William  saw  fit  to  decorate  him  with  an  order, 
and  to  command  his  literary  opponents  to  keep  silent. 

It  is  safe  to  say,  that  at  no  time  in  these  earlier  years  was 
there  any  conspiracy  which  hazarded  the  king  s  safety  or 
that  of  existing  political  institutions.  But  in  one  quarter 
there  was  a  great  deal  of  zeal  for  reform,  a  certain  amount 
of  incendiary  eloquence,  and  two  isolated  cases  of  shock¬ 
ing  crime,  —  enough,  and  more  than  enough,  to  focus  Met- 
ternich’s  attention  on  the  secret  societies  in  the  German 
universities.  These  Burschenschaften ,  as  they  were  called, 
had  been  founded  in  1815,  with  the  noblest  purposes, 
and  in  patriotic  antagonism  to  the  Laudschctfteyi ,  which 
represented  the  separatism  of  the  various  petty  states. 
The  originators  of  the  association  were  eleven  students 
of  Jena,  all  of  whom  had  learned  the  more  serious  side 
of  life  on  bloody  battle-fields,  and  had  come  home  with 
a  loathing  for  the  shallow,  vicious  ideals  of  the  ordinary 
student  societies.  Sobriety  and  chastity  were  conditions 
of  entrance,  and  the  silly  twaddle  of  the  Commers  was  con¬ 
demned  ;  while  each  member  was  admonished  to  attend  his 


12 


H 


* 


STRUGGLE  FOR  CONSTITUTIONAL  GOVERNMENT  329 

lectures  regularly  and  to  show  industry  in  his  work.  The 
watchword  of  the  Burschenschaft  was  “honor,  liberty, 
fatherland”;  and  the  academic,  was  to  be  a  model  of  the 
larger  national  life,  every  moral  and  physical  faculty  being 
trained  for  the  country’s  benefit.  Fichte  and  Schleier- 
macher,  Jahn  and  Arndt,  were  chosen  as  examples  and 
leaders ;  and  a  song  of  the  last-named,  “  Sind  wir  vereint  zur 
guten  Stunde ,”  became  the  hymn,  as  it  were,  of  the  fraternity. 

Jahn,  who  had  been  given  a  degree  from  Jena,  and  who 
had  established  there  one  of  his  gymnastic  training  grounds, 
had  been  indirectly  concerned  in  founding  the  Burschen¬ 
schaft.  The  glowing  patriotism  of  this  exalted  and  rather 
ill-balanced  man — who  seriously  suggested  allowing  a  strip 
of  wilderness  to  grow  up  between  France  and  Germany 
and  peopling  it  with  wild  beasts  —  found  a  ready  echo  in 
these  fiery  young  hearts. 

From  the  beginning,  it  was  designed  to  make  the  organ-  The  Wart, 
ization  of  the  Burschenschaft  as  widespread  as  possible;  burg 
and  within  two  years  it  had  found  footing  in  sixteen  festival* 
different  universities.  A  common  flag  had  been  adopted, 
made  up  of  the  red,  black,  and  gold,  which  were  errone¬ 
ously  supposed  to  have  been  the  colors  of  the  old  Holy 
Roman  Empire.  In  1817,  it  was  determined  to  cement 
the  union  of  all  the  chapters  by  holding  a  congress,  or 
festival,  which  should,  at  the  same  time,  be  a  memorial  of 
great  national  events.  The  day  chosen  was  the  anniversary 
of  the  battle  of  Leipzig,  and  the  Landsturm  of  Eisenach 
were  to  join  in  the  celebration ;  while  the  place  was  to  be 
the  Wartburg,  so  memorable  in  the  history  of  the  Refor¬ 
mation,  of  which  this  was  the  three  hundredth  anniversary. 

There  was  a  peculiar  fitness,  moreover,  in  this  young  band 
of  patriots  holding  their  assembly  within  the  territory  of 
the  Grand  Duke  of  Weimar;  for,  as  was  repeatedly  em¬ 
phasized  during  the  proceedings,  Charles  Augustus  was 


330 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


the  only  prince  who  up  to  that  date  end  of  181 1  had 
kept  his  promise  and  given  his  people  a  constitution. 

The  demon-  The  Wartburg  festival  has  become  famous  in  history, 

strationson  not  because  of  anything  really  remarkable  in  the  ratier 
the  Wart-  harmless  and  boyish  proceedings,  but  because  of  the  effect 
bur§‘  that  the  report  of  those  proceedings  had  upon  Metternich 

and  the  sovereigns  of  Europe.  In  some  of  the  speeches 
at  the  Wartburg  it  was,  indeed,  declared  that  the  hopes  of 
the  war  of  liberation  had  not  been  realized ;  but,  on  the 
whole,  the  official  program  of  the  18th  and  19th  of  October 
was  carried  through  with  dignity  and  moderation.  Ad¬ 
dresses  were  made  by  professors  of  J ena ;  and,  before  part¬ 
ing,  some  two  hundred  delegates  consecrated  the  closer 
union  of  their  organizations,  by  partaking  together  of  the 
Lord’s  Supper.  But,  on  the  evening  of  the  18th,  some 
wilder  spirits  —  in  memory  of  Luther’s  burning  of  the 
Pope’s  bull  —  inaugurated  an  auto-da-fe  on  the  little  hill 
that  faces  the  castle.  Into  the  flames,  with  disquisitions 
on  their  demerits,  were  thrown  a  number  of  books;  among 
them  the  writing  in  which  Schmalz  belittled  the  work  of 
the  patriots  of  1818,  a  history  of  Germany  by  one  Kotzebue, 

_ who  was  hated  as  a  Russian  spy,  —  a  Code  Napoleon,  and 

several  writings  against  the  new  gymnastics.  As  emblems 
of  the  old  military  tyranny,  there  were  also- burned  a  cor¬ 
poral’s  staff,  a  pigtail,  and  one  of  the  wonderful  inventions 
by  which  officers  prepared  their  figures  for  their  fault¬ 
lessly  fitting  uniforms. 

Excitement  On  receipt  of  greatly  exaggerated  accounts  of  what  had 
at  the  taken  place  at  the  Wartburg,  Prussia  and  Austria  sent 
different  speciai  envoys  to  the  Grand  Duke  of  Weimar ;  who,  after 

courts.  investigation  on  the  part  of  his  ministry,  failed  to  find 

that  the  students  had  committed  any  grave  fault.  But 
the  Prussian  minister  of  police  denounced  this  “  band  of 
demoralized  professors  and  corrupted  students,”  and  de- 


/ 


STRUGGLE  FOR  CONSTITUTIONAL  GOVERNMENT  331 

|  f1"8*  *hat  such  “vandalism  of  demagogic  intolerance” 

!  .  dishonored  the  classic  Wartburg.  It  was  widely  be¬ 

lieved  that,  among  the  books  burned,  had  been  the  act  of 
confederation  of  the  German  states.  Metternich  saw  in 
the  festival  the  beginning  of  a  widespread  conspiracy, 
which,  he  declared,  was  not  confined  to  students ;  and  it 
was  reported  that  the  members  of  the  Burschenschaft  had 
sworn  to  die,  if  need  be,  for  their  organization. 

At  a  meeting  of  sovereigns,  which  took  place  at  Aix- 
la-Chapelle,  Metternich  found  an  opportunity  to  work 
directly  on  the  feelings  of  Frederick  William  III.,  —  who, 
indeed,  was  already  half  beside  himself  with  fear.  He 
had  investigated  the  case  of  every  Prussian  who  had  been 
present  at  the  festival,  and  had  set  a  watch  on  the  Bursoh- 
enschaften  as  well  as  on  all  the  Turnvereine,  or  gymnastic 
associations .  in  Prussia ;  and  had  threatened  to  suppress 
any  university  where  the  spirit  of  disobedience  should  be 
found.  Metternich  persuaded  him,  that  the  granting  of 
a  constitution  would  only  increase  the  impending  dangers. 
Had  not  this  very  festival  taken  place  in  the  dominions  of 
a  too  liberal-minded  prince?  When,  therefore,  in  these 
days,  a  delegation  from  the  Rhine  provinces  came  to  ask 

(for  the  carrying  out  of  those  former  promises,  the  Prussian 
king  turned  them  ungraciously  away.  He  lent  a  willing 
ear  to  Metternich’s  attacks  on  the  freedom  of  the  press 
and  on  the  want  of  supervision  over  the  teachings  of  pro¬ 
fessors  in  the  universities.  The  Austrian  recommended 
the  strictest  kind  of  investigation  into  everything  pertain¬ 
ing  to  student  life. 

Meanwhile,  through  this  policy  of  repression,  and  through 
the  failure  of  the  sovereigns  of  Germany  to  keep  their 
promise  of  granting  constitutions,  the  Burschenschaften 
really  were  becoming  dangerous;  not  because  of  any 

widely  organized  conspiracy,  but  because,  in  all  such  asso- 

. 

I 


Repressive 
measures  of 
Frederick 
William 

HI. 


332 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  O  ERMANY 


The  murder 
of  Kotzebue 
by  Karl 
Sand. 


ciations,  there  are  sure  to  be  extremists  ready  to  draw  the 
full  consequences  from  inflammatory  talk.  Here  and 
there,  it  had  actually  been  debated  whether  it  was  wrong 
to  kill  a  prince  for  the  good  of  his  people  ;  whether,  indeed, 
a  political  murder  would  not  be  the  best  way  of  stirring 
men  up  to  great  deeds.  A  party  had  been  formed  at  Jena 
called  the  Unbedingten ,  or  unconditionals,  which  had  m 
mind  a  radical  reform  of  the  whole  German  system.  The 
sovereigns  were  to  be  reduced  to  the  condition  of  elected 
officials  responsible  to  the  people.  The  head  of  the 
“  unconditionals,”  Augustus  Follen,  was  credited  with  the 
design  of  calling  a  mass  meeting  on  the  battle-field  of 
Leipzig,  for  the  purpose  of  proclaiming  a  German  republic. 

A  special  object  of  hatred  was  the  publicist  Kotzebue, 
who  furnished  the  Czar  with  political  reports  of  what  went 
on  in  Germany,  and  who  was  looked  upon  by  the  students 
as  the  “  paid  spy  of  despotism.”  J ena  was,  finally,  made  too 
unpleasant  for  him  as  a  place  of  residence,  and  he  removed 

to  Mannheim. 

But  in  the  heart  of  one  exalted  and  not  altogether 
responsible  student,  Karl  Sand  by  name,  the  conviction 
had  grown  up,  that  the  only  way  of  saving  the  fatherland 
was  to  rid  it  forever  of  such  a  traitor  as  Kotzebue.  Sand 
was  a  gentle  youth,  who,  according  to  his  own  confession, 
had  long  thirsted  to  show  his  devotion  to  his  country  by 
one  decisive  deed.  There  was  something  fantastic  in  his 
nature:  he  loved  to  go  round  in  old  Germanic  costume,  to 
drink  out  of  oak-crowned  goblets ;  while  the  place  where  he 
met  with  his  student  friends  he  had  named  the  “  Rutli.  As 
far  as  Kotzebue  was  concerned,  Sand  did  him  far  too  much 
honor  in  regarding  him  as  a  dangerous  enemy.  But  all 
the  rulers  of  Europe  were  now  thrown  into  inconceivable 
excitement  by  the  news  of  a  crime,  that  seemed  to  them 
but  one  demonstration  of  the  whole  Burschenschaft  spirit. 


STRUGGLE  FOR  CONSTITUTIONAL  GOVERNMENT  333 


how  Sand  had  journeyed  to  Mannheim,  and  been  admitted 
to  Kotzebue  s  house;  how,  as  the  old  man  walked  unsus¬ 
pectingly  to  meet  him,  the  student  had  thrown  himself  upon 
him  and  stabbed  him  to  the  heart.  Sand  had  then  tried 
to  kill  himself,  but,  his  wound  not  proving  fatal,  he  was 
brought  to  trial,  judged  guilty  of  murder,  and  executed. 
The  trial  took  the  form  of  an  inquiry  into  a  supposed 
conspiracy,  the  belief  in  which  was  strengthened  by  the 
enthusiasm  shown  for  Sand.  Many  of  his  fellow-students 
looked  upon  him  as  a  second  Mutius  Scaevola,  or  William 
dell.  They  had  at  one  time  contemplated  marching  upon 
Mannheim  for  the  purpose  of  setting  him  free.  As  his 
head  fell  upon  the  scaffold  many  stepped  up  and  dipped 
their  handkerchiefs  in  his  blood,  as  in  the  blood  of  a 
martyr.  Even  older  men  of  good  standing  approved  of 
the  motive,  if  not  of  the  means,  and  wrote  letters  of  con¬ 
dolence  to  Sand  s  mother ;  while,  blasphemous  as  it  may 
sound,  in  the  mouth  of  the  people  the  spot  where  his  head 
had  fallen  came  to  be  known  as  Ascension  Meadow  ! 

The  rulers  of  the  Holy  Alliance  looked,  not  unnaturally, 
upon,  the  murder  of  Kotzebue  as  a  manifestation  of  the 
same  spirit  that  had  inaugurated  the  Wartburg  festival. 
This  Burschenschaft  seemed  to  them  a  revival  of  the  old 
Vehmgericht ,  the  members  of  which  had  been  told  off  by  lot 
to  commit  bloody  deeds.  Its  ultimate  object  was  thought  to 
be  the  overthrow  of  all  monarchical  institutions  :  this  mur¬ 
der  was  but  one  of  a  series,  and  others  might  presently  be 
expected.  And,  sure  enough,  within  a  few  weeks,  an  apoth¬ 
ecary  at  Schwalbach,  Lohnung,  attempted  to  stab  and  shoot 
the  president  of  the  government  of  Nassau  ;  and,  on  being 
carried  to  prison,  ended  his  life  by  eating  broken  glass. 
An  Austrian  minister  received  a  letter  of  warning.  These 
were  unhappy  days  for  the  Czar,  whose  own  father  had 
been  murdered  ;  for  the  autocrat  in  Vienna,  but,  most  of 


Petty 
oppression 
in  Prussia. 


The  perse¬ 
cution  of 
Ernst 
Moritz 
Arndt. 


334  -  A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

all,  for  the  timid  Frederick  William.  The  latter  recalled 
all  Prussian  students  from  Jena,  and  deprived  them  of 
the  chance  of  holding  state  offices.  Extraordinary  powers 
were  given  to  the  police,  and  students  letteis  weie  inter¬ 
cepted  and  opened.  Great  excitement  was  aroused  be¬ 
cause  one  such  missive  was  found  to  contain  a  quotation 
from  Goethe’s  Egmont ,  “  Whenever  I  see  beautiful,  proud 
necks,  I  think  how  fine  it  would  be  to  run  them  through 
with  my  sword.”  Other  expressions  led  to  the  conclusion 
that  an  attempt  was  intended  on  Frederick  William  s  life  ; 
while,  at  the  same  time,  an  agent  of  the  government  re¬ 
ported  from  the  University  of  Giessen,  that  a  plot  had  been 
detected  to  murder  all  the  princes  and  to  unite  Germany. 

All  this  explains,  if  it  does  not  justify,  the  severity  of  the 
reaction  that  now  set  in.  In  July,  1819,  the  gymnastic 
establishments  in  Prussia  were  closed.  Father  Jahn  was 
seized  and  dragged  off  to  Spandau,  and  then  to  Kiistrin. 
A  watch  was  set  on  the  university  professors  ;  while  many 
innocent  persons  were  persecuted  and  their  houses  searched, 
their  papers  read.  Even  Gneisenau  was  surrounded  by 
spies,  and  Schleiermacher  placed  on  parole.  Stein,  who 
had  founded  a  society  for  German  history,  and  was  about 
to  start  the  great  collection  known  as  the  Monumenta 
Rerum  G-ermanicarum ,  was  suspected  of  a  design  to  prove 
that,  in  the  Middle  Ages,  princes  had  no  real  supreme  power 
over  their  subjects.  Perhaps  the  worst  sufferer  of  all  was 
Ernst  Moritz  Arndt,  the  man  who  had  been  untiring  in 
helping  to  rid  his  country  from  French  tyranny,  and  who 
had  been  rewarded  by  a  professorship  at  Bonn.  Early  in 
1819,  he  had  been  informed  that  “  his  Majesty  could  not 
have  any  teachers  in  the  Prussian  universities  who  laid 
down  principles  such  as  those  contained  in  the  fourth  part 
of  the  Spirit  of  the  A.ge  [which  had  just  appeared],  and 
that,  on  the  next  occasion  of  the  kind,  he  would  be  removed 


STRUGGLE  FOR  CONSTITUTIONAL  GOVERNMENT  335 

from  his  post.  After  the  murder  of  Kotzebue  and  the 
attempt  of  Lohnung,  Arndt’s  house  was  searched  and  his 
private  papers  were  carted  off  in  great  sacks.  In  spite  of 
his  protest  to  Hardenberg  that  he  “hated  all  secret  intrigues 
like  snakes  of  hell,”  he  was  treated  as  a  suspect,  and  re¬ 
peatedly  examined  by  commissioners,  who  happened  to  be 
low,  ignorant  fellows.  The  charges  against  him  were: 
secret  conspiracy,  corrupting  of  youth,  and  planning  to 
form  a  republic.  The  investigation  dragged  on  for  years, 
and  the  inquiries  extended  to  the  pettiest  conceivable 
matters.  Chief  Commissioner  Pape  once  pointed  out  a 
passage  in  a  letter,  written  twelve  years  before,  in  which 
Arndt  had  said  that  his  h*5  ad  was  full  of  so  many  things 
he  could  write  no  more:  Just  what  things,  asked  Pape, 
was  Arndt’s  head  full  of  at  that  time  ?  and  witnesses  were 
summoned  to  elucidate  the  point.  For  twenty  years,  so 
long  as  Frederick  William  III.  lived,  Arndt  was  refused 
permission  to  lecture ;  although,  on  the  accession  of  Fred¬ 
erick  William  IV.,  in  1840,  he  was  made  rector  of  the  Uni¬ 
versity  of  Bonn.  He  reopened  his  courses,  at  the  age  of 
seventy,  amid  demonstrations  of  the  wildest  enthusiasm. 

This  narrow-mindedness  at  the  Prussian  court  was  to 
no  one  more  welcome  than  to  Metternich.  He  kept  his 
agents  at  Berlin,  constantly  egged  Frederick  William  on, 
and  finally,  in  the  so-called  “  Teplitz  Punctation,”  came  to  a 
secret  agreement  as  to  the  policy  to  be  pursued  throughout 
Germany.  Moreover  he  exacted  a  pledge  that  it  should 
be  carried  out.  Frederick  W illiam  was  to  do  nothing  in 
the  way  of  granting  a  constitution  until  the  “  inner  and 
financial  affairs  of  his  state  should  have  been  brought 
into  perfect  order,”—  which  was  equivalent  to  relegating 
the  whole  matter  tc  the  Greek  Calends.  Minister  of 
Police  Kamptz,  —  after  publishing  a  definition  of  high 
treason,  which  made  a  crime  of  every  expression  of  a  desire 


The  Carls¬ 
bad  decrees. 


386 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


for  a  constitution, — joined  with  Austria  in  calling  a  minis¬ 
terial  congress  at  Carlsbad  to  take  further  steps  against 
the  spirit  of  revolution.  The  decrees  there  passed  were 
then  made  law  by  action  of  the  Frankfort  Diet;  and  Met- 
ternich’s  followers  could  boast  that  they  had  gained  a 
battle  greater  than  that  of  Leipzig.  If  the  Burschen- 

schaft _ which  was  now  declared  dissolved  —  could  be 

compared  to  the  Vehmgericht,  the  new  Central  Investi¬ 
gation  Commission,  that  was  established  at  Mainz,  was  a 
second  Spanish  inquisition.  It  was  to  be  ever  on  the 
scent  for  “  revolutionary  practices  and  demagogic  associa¬ 
tions,”  and,  though  without  power  to  impose  sentence, 
could  and  did.  as  in  the  case  of  Arndt,  make  a  man’s  life 


miserable  foi  rs.  Hundreds  of  innocent  persons  were 
arrested,  on  no  uger  ground  than  an  incautious  remark 
or  a  passage  in  a  vate  letter.  As  red,  black,  and  gold 
were  the  colors  c  he  Burschenschaft ,  they  might  no¬ 
where  be  displayed,-  >t  even  in  the  popular  combination 
of  yellow  straw  hats  ’ack  coats,  and  red  waistcoats. 
Every  writing  under  3.  ages  in  length  was  subject  to 
censorship  ;  while  goven  it  officials  were  to  watch  the 
professors  in  the  university  nd  see  that  they  taught  no 
evil.  No  wonder  a  man  lii  Item  was  unsparing  in  his 
blame  of  Metternich  and  Ha  iberg.  To  the  former  he 
applied  the  adjectives  “empty  norant,  blatant,  and  con¬ 
ceited  ”  ;  to  the  latter,  “  frrv  is,  licentious,  arrogant, 
false,  afraid-of-losing-his-place.  n  Prussia,  there  was  a 
ministerial  crisis ;  and  Humbol  Boyen,  and  Beyme  re¬ 
ceived  their  dismissal. 

The  Vienna  Yet  Metternich  went  his  way,  Bed  a  conference  to 

Final  Act.  Vienna,  and,  in  the* -called  Vienr  inal  Act,  crystallized 

all  his  reactionary  measures.  A  ding  to  Article  57, 

“  the  entire  power  in  state  affair,  ust  rest  unimpaired 

.  with  the  head  of  the  state.”  In  ce  n  matters  no  consti- 

f  . 

'jJ 


STRUGGLE  FOR  CONSTITUTIONAL  GOVERNMENT  337 

tuition  might  bind  him,  in  no  parliament  were  the  “  lawful 
limits  of  free  utterance  to  be  exceeded.”  The  federal  Diet 
was  to  watch  for  dangerous  expressions  of  opinion  on 
the  part  of  the  state  assemblies.  On  May  15,  1820,  the 
“Final  Act  was  adopted  by  the  Diet ;  — “  worth  more  than 
the  battle  of  Waterloo”  was  the  verdict  of  Metternich’s 
henchman,  the  Prussian  Gentz. 

The  Mainz  commission  continued  its  activity  for  seven 
years.  According  to  one  of  its  own  reports  it  endeavored 
to  establish  the  degree  of  certainty,  or  of  greater  or  less 
probability,  not  according  to  the  rules  prescribed  by  any 
special  legislation,  “  but  according  to  the  principles  of 
historic  belief  and  its  own  subjective  conviction  !  ”  Among 
those  who  are  mentioned  as  having  u  caused,  encouraged, 
and  furthered  revolutionary  strivings,  though  possibly 
without  intent,”  are  mentioned  Arndt,  Stein,  Gneisenau, 
Blucher,  York,  Schleiermacher,  and  Fichte  ! 

The  dissolution  of  the  Burschensehaft  took  place,  but 
with  results  directly  opposite  to  those  intended.  Far  and 
wide  was  sung  the  famous  song  of  Augustus  Binzer,  “  Wir 
hatten  gebauet  ein  stattliches  Haus,” — in  which  he  tells  of 
the  happy,  free,  idyllic  student  life  which  has  been  crushed, 
like  young  green  shoots  of  grass,  by  wicked  men :  — 

“  Das  Band  ist  zerschnitten,  war  schtvarz,  roth  und  gold, 

Und  Gott  hat  es  gelitten!  wer  weiss,  was  er  gewollt ? 

Das  Haus  mag  zerf alien,  was  hat's  dennfur  Not? 

Ber  Geist  lebt  inuns  alien,  und  unsere  Burg  ist  Gott .” 

On  the  ruins  of  the  Burschensehaft,  arose  associations 
which  really  were  political  and  revolutionary,  and  which 
were  modelled  on  the  Italian  Carbonari  and  similar  organi¬ 
zations  in  Spain,  France,  Russia,  and  Greece.  The  watch¬ 
word  of  one  of  them  was  the  seemingly  innocent  question  : 
“Have  you  been  on  the  Johannisberg  to-day?  ” — with  the 

VOL.  II  —  Z 


* 


The  Central 
Commis¬ 
sion  at 
Mainz. 


The  disso¬ 
lution  of  the 
Burschen- 
schaft. 


338 


A  SHORT  HISTORi  OF  Gr  NY 


The  Ham- 

bach 

festival. 


answer,  44  Yes,  I  was  tliere  in  May,”  or  44 1  go  there  in 
May.”  The  doings  of  another  of  these  secre.  mes  were 
exposed  in  1824,  and  some  of  the  members  were  tinned 
to  death,  others  to  imprisonment ;  while  Metteri.  tak¬ 
ing  advantage  of  the  general  alarm,  caused  the  Gt.  ad 
decrees  to  be  renewed,  and  a  stricter  watch  to  be  kept  on 


the  different  parliaments. 

The  revolution  of  1830  in  France  gave  new  stimulus  to 
the  discontented  elements  in  Germany,  and,  in  several  states 
where  crying  evils  existed,  these  were  summarily  swept 
away.  Duke  Charles  of  Brunswick,  a  bad  character  who 
nearly  ruined  his  state  by  arbitrary  taxes  and  inflation  of 
the  currency,  was  driven  out.  The  same  thing  happened 
in  Hesse,  where  the  elector,  William  II.,  had  been  in  the 
habit  of  using  his  cane,  and  even  his  knife,  too  freely,  and 
was  accused  of  combining  with  the  bakers  to  raise  the 
price  of  bread.  In  Saxony  and  in  Hanover,  concessions 
were  demanded  and  obtained  ;  while  in  Bavaria  there  took 
place  a  demonstration  more  serious  than  the  much-decried 
Wartburg  festival.  In  an  immense  gathering  in  the 
Palatine  Castle  of  Hambach,  inflammatory  addresses  were 
made,  vengeance  vowed  against  tyrants,  and  the  sentiment 
uttered  that 44  the  best  prince  by  the  grace  of  God  is  a  born 
traitor  to  the  human  race  !  ”  Metternich  brought  forward 
a  motion  in  the  Diet,  which  was  passed  in  an  amended 
form,  to  the  effect  that  all  concessions  won  from  a  sov¬ 
ereign  by  violent  means  should  be  null  and  void ;  while 
another  decree  declared  that,  if  a  parliament  should  refuse 
taxes  to  the  head  of  a  state,  it  might  be  intimidated  by 
troops  of  the  Confederation. 

But  these  repressive  measures  led  to  an  exasperation  on 
the  part  of  the  radical  elements  such  as  had  not  yet  been 
'  known.  The  Burschenschaft  awoke  to  new  life,  and  two  of 
the  boldest  projects  were  formed  :  one  to  r  h  on  Stutt- 


STRUGGLE  FOR  CONSTITUTIONAL  GOVERNMENT  389 


gait  and  take  prisoner  the  king  of  Wlirtemberg,  who  had 
revoked  his  constitution  ;  the  other  to  raise  in  Frankfort 
a  revolt  which,  it  was  believed,  would  spread  all  over 
South  Germany ;  and  to  capture  the  federal  Diet.  Both 
attempts  proved  ridiculous  failures  ; — ii?  vain  the  great  bell 
of  the  city  of  Frankfort  tolled  the  signal  for  uprising ;  in 
vain  foui  hundred  students  marched  in  behind  their  black, 
red,  and  golden  banners.  They  had  miscalculated  their 
own  influence,  and  the  citizens  would  not  be  roused.  The 
whole  extent  of  the  damage  was  nine  killed,  twenty-four 
wounded,  and  thirty  students  taken  prisoner.  But,  even 
had  it  been  much  greater,  the  authorities  could  scarcely 
have  resorted  to  severer  retaliatory  measures.  A  com¬ 
mission  like  that  of  Mainz  was  once  more  established,  and 
eighteen  hundred  cases  were  tried.  A  stricter  censorship 
was  introduced,  and  the  system  of  passports  carried  to 
such  an  extent  that  no  one  could  enter  a  hired  carriage 
without  producing  such  a  paper.  In  Bavaria,  those  con¬ 
victed  of  treasonable  intents  were  forced  to  kneel  before 
the  picture  of  the  king, — which  was  now  set  up  in  every 
court  room, — and  to  sue  for  mercy.  In  Prussia,  thirty- 
nine  students  werke  condemned  to  death,  their  sentences 
being  afterward  commuted  to  long  imprisonment. 

On  the  whole,  the  revolutionary  propaganda  was  con¬ 
fined  to  the  students,  and  the  dread  and  terror  to  the 
supreme  rulers.  The  main  body  of  the  people  were  not 
discontented  with  their  lot ;  and  many  agreed  with  Hegel 
that  “  whatever  is  is  sensible  and  whatever  is  sensible  is.” 
Frederick  William  III.,  with  all  his  faults,  was  much 
beloved.  He  had  shared  the  darkest  imaginable  days  with 
his  subjects  and  was  now  sharing  their  peace  and  pros¬ 
perity.  It  was  recognized  that  his  refusal  to  grant  liberal 
institutions  was  not  for  the  purpose  of  cloaking  bad 
government,  but  rather  from  deep  conviction.  His 


The  at¬ 
tempt  to 
raise  a 
revolution 
in  Frank¬ 
fort. 


General 

commercial 

prosperity. 


The  found¬ 
ing  of  the 
Zollverein. 


340  A  SHORT  HIS  Y  OF  GERMANY 

general  policy  with  regard  to  trade  and  commerce  was 
wise,  and  the  country  was  growing  rich.  Taxation  was 
moderate,  justice  whs  fairly  administered,  educational 
reforms  were  introduced,  and  large  sums  were  spent  on 
public  works.  The  first  railway  was  opened  in  Germany 
in  1835,  between  Fiirth  and  Nuremberg,  and  Prussia  se¬ 
cured  her  full  benefit  from  the  change. 

A  peculiarly  beneficent  institution,  and  an  important 
step  in  developing  Prussia’s  political  as  well  as  her  mei- 
cantile  ascendency,  was  the  Zollverein ,  or  Customs  Union, 
established  in  1833.  It  showed  what  immense  benefits 
in  every  field  could  be  expected  from  cooperation.  When 
Prussia  reorganized  her  territory,  in  1815,  she  had  found 
no  less  than  sixty-seven  different  tariff  schedules  in  oper¬ 
ation  in  her  various  provinces ;  while,  for  one  travers¬ 
ing  Germany  at  large,  there  were  thirty-six  different 
boundaries,  each  with  its  own  custom-house.  Nor  at 
any  single  one  of  these  frontiers,  was  the  coin  of  the 
neighboring  state  accepted,  or  were  the  postal  airange- 
ments  the  same.  Prussia  s  first  step,  in  1818  A.H.,  was 
to  establish  a  single  tariff  for  all  her  own  lands ;  her  next 
to  declare  her  willingness  to  accept  neighboring  princi¬ 
palities  as  partners  in  her  new  system.  Her  policy  was 
not  to  urge  and  not  to  use  force.  But  the  advantages 
were  so  apparent,  the  profits  so  enormously  increased,  that, 
»  by  1842,  all  the  states  of  Germany,  save  Mecklenburg, 
Hanover,  and  Austria,  had  been  absorbed.  Austria,  in¬ 
deed,  was  not  desired,  for  the  reason  that  no  reliance  could 
be  placed  on  all  her  heterogeneous  dependencies.  One 
great  result  of  the  Zollverein  was,  that  the  smaller  states 
were  now  bound  by  strong  ties  of  interest  to  Prussia. 

The  question  of  a  constitution  was  allowed  to  slumber 
during  the  last  years  of  the  reign  of  Frederick  William  III. ; 
but  it  was  revived  at  the  moment  of  his- death,  and  Frederick 


STRUGGLE  FOR  CONSTITUTIONAL  GOVERNMENT  341 


r 

. 


r 


I 

* 


William  IV.,  when  he  went  to  receive  homage  at  Konigs- 
berg,  was  met  by  a  petition  that  those  earlier  promises 
might  be  fulfilled.  The  matter  was  assuming  larger  and 
larger  proportions ;  for  the  sentiment  was  gaining  ground 
that  Prussia  was  the  natural  leader  of  Germany,  and  that, 
in  order  to  fulfil  her  mission,  she  must  have  liberal  institu¬ 
tions.  All  depended  on  the  character  of  the  new  Prussian 
king  :  did  he  have  the  strength  and  the  tact  to  hold  the 
loyalty  of  a  united  German  people  ? 

The  reign  opened  well.  In  a  series  of  brilliant  speeches 
the  king  let  it  be  known  that  he  meant  to  make  great 
changes,  and  he  began  by  pardoning  political  prisoners. 
Arndt  was  reinstated  in  all  his  university  dignities.  Jahn 
was  released  from  surveillance,  and  treated  with  respect 
and  consideration.  The  brothers  Grimm,  belonging  to 
the  famous  “Gottingen  seven,” — who  had  given  up  their 
professorships  and  gone  into  exile  rather  than  submit  to 
an  arbitrary  abrogation  of  the  Hanoverian  constitution, — 
were  welcomed  in  Berlin  and  given  chairs  in  the  univer¬ 
sity.  But,  popular  as  these  single  measures  were,  a  counter 
current  soon  set  in.  Men  began  to  perceive  that  the  prom¬ 
ises  so  abundantly  offered  by  the  new  king  were  nothing 
but  glittering  generalities.  After  listening  to  eloquent 
speeches  that  seemed  to  portend  a  constitution,  they  found 
that  nothing  of  the  kind  was  meant. 

The  people  were  very  much  in  earnest  if  the  king  was 
not*  Their  leading-strings  had  grown  unbearable,  and,  as 
year  after  year  went  by  without  their  obtaining  those 
liberties  which  now  seem  a  necessary  adjunct  of  civiliza¬ 
tion,  —  political  representation,  freedom  of  the  press,  trial 
by  jury,  —  it  was  evident  that  a  struggle  must  come  which, 
as  likely  as  not,  would  be  a  bloody  one.  It  is  surprising, 
indeed,  to  see  how  loyal  the  Prussians  remained  to  the 
House  of  Hohenzollern,  even  while  they  criticised  its 
momentary  representative. 


The  open¬ 
ing  of  the 
reign  of 
Frederick 
William  IV 


842 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Dissatisfac¬ 
tion  with 
Frederick 
William  IV. 


Brilliant  as  were  some  of  his  attainments,  there  is  no 
doubt  but  that  from  the  first  Frederick  William  IV.  was 
lacking  in  mental  balance.  He  would  shift  at  random 
from  one  policy  to  the  other,  would  one  day  pass  a  liberal 
measure  and  the  next  go  to  the  opposite  extreme.  He 
would  publicly  profess  to  despise  criticism  and  then  try 
to  stop  it  by  unjust  means ;  even  going  so  far  as  to  sup¬ 
press  all  the  publications  of  a  printing-house  that  had 
displeased  him.  To  a  certain  poet,  Herwegh,  who  had 
written  against  him,  the  king  said  affably,  I  love  a  can¬ 
did  opposition”;  but  later  proscribed  and  banished  him, — 
his  ire  having  been  aroused  by  a  caricature  in  which  his 
love  of  a  candid  opposition  was  contrasted  with  the  heap 
of  books  and  newspapers  confiscated  by  his  orders.  Once 
thoroughly  gauged,  his  very  wit  and  eloquence  told 
against  him,  and  his  every  action  was  submitted  to  a  file 
of  criticism.  It  was  taken  ill  that  he  set  up  his  abode  in 
Sans  Souci,  the  little  castle  at  Potsdam  so  full  of  memo¬ 
ries  of  Frederick  the  Great ;  and  he  was  thought  to  wish 
to  copy  him  in  other  ways.  A  famous  caricature  of  the 
time  represents  him  as  following  in  Frederick’s  footsteps 
in  the  snow,  but  always  a  little  to  one  side.  The  great 
Heinrich  Heine  wrote  of  him,  with  caustic  severity . 

“  Ein  Konig  soil  nicht  witzig  sein ,  , 

Em  Konig  soil  nicht  hitzig  sein , 

Er  soil  nicht  Alten-Fritzig  sein.'1 

The  tendency  to  be  “hitzig”  or  vehement,  is  shown  in 
almost  every  letter  that  Frederick  William  wrote;  there 
being  no  end  to  the  passionate  interjections,  the  under¬ 
scoring  of  words,  the  multiplication  of  exclamation  points. 

Even  a  Frederick  William  IV.,  overflowing  as  he  was 
*  with  belief  in  the  divine  right  of  kings,  could  not  close  his 


STRUGGLE  FOR  CONSTITUTIONAL  GOVERNMENT  343 


eyes  to  the  discontent  and  want  of  confidence  shown  by  his  The  sum- 
people.  In  1842  he  tried  to  stop  the  clamor  for  a  general^  moning  °t 
Prussian  parliament  by  calling  together  a  committee  from 
the  local  assemblies.  Such  a  committee,  consisting  of 
ninety-eight  delegates,  actually  came  together  in  Berlin; 
only  to  find  that  on  all  matters  of  real  interest  to  them  the 
king  had  already  “  made  up  his  mind.”  Five  years  later, 
he  took  a  great  step  in  advance  by  summoning  a  Verein- 
igter  Landtag ,  or  united  Diet,  including  all  the  members 
of  all  the  local  assemblies.  The  issue  of  the  royal  patent  • 
of  February  3,  184T,  caused  great  surprise  and  joy,  until  it 
was  found  that  the  king’s  main  object  was  to  secure  a  loan 
for  a  much-needed  railroad  between  Berlin  and  Konigsberg. 

For  his  own  part  Frederick  William  meant  to  grant  as 
little  as  possible.  The  Diet  was  there,  he  declared,  to  repre¬ 
sent  interests,  not  to  offer  opinions.  When  the  delegates 
spoke  of  vested  rights  of  the  people  he  told  them  that  the 
assembly  had  no  rights  other  than  those  granted  by  the 
patent  of  February  3.  When  the  question  of  a  constitution 
came  up  he  made  one  of  his  usual  speeches  and  gave  vent 
to  the  famous  peroration:  “No  written  sheet  of  paper 
shall  ever  thrust  itself  like  a  second  providence  between 
the  Lord  God  in  heaven  and  this  land.”  Members  of  the 
opposition  were  treated  to  petty  slights,  such  as  not  being 
invited  to  court  festivities. 

The  whole  progress  of  the  Diet  was  very  unsatisfactory.  Results 
The  delegates  strove  in  vain  to  have  their  own  position  from  the 
defined,  and  the  temper  of  the  house  was  such  that  the  I)iet' 
government’s  demand  for  a  loan  was  rejected.  In  itself 
the  demand  was  timely,  just,  and  reasonable;  but  even  the 
delegates  from  East  Prussia,  which  province  would  have 
gained  most  by  the  proposed  railroad,  voted  against  it. 

The  “  united  Diet  ”  was  dismissed  with  apparently  no 
results;  but  in  reality  the  gains  were  important.  In  the 


344 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  out¬ 
break  of 
revolution. 


, first  place,  the  differences  between  the  crown  and  the  people 
had  come  to  a  head.  This  king  had  been  given  a  last 
opportunity,  which  he  had  failed  to  improve.  No  one 
doubted  now  that  revolution  alone  would  bring  him  to 
terms.  Then,  too,  a  hitherto  unheard-of  publicity  had 
been  given  to  all  the  proceedings;  and  the  London  Times 
had  had  a  regular  correspondent  in  the  assembly,  so  that 
the  eyes  of  all  Europe  were  on  this  state  struggling  for 
liberal  institutions.  Finally,  this  gathering  had  brought 
into  prominence  a  number  of  men  who  were  to  be  the  leaders 
in  the  great  national  crises  that  were  impending  —  among 
them  Otto  von  Bismarck,  as  yet  in  the  ban  of  narrow  social 
prejudices,  and  therefore  a  violent  conservative../ 

It  was  an  unfortunate  time  for  Frederic!  William  to 
fall  out  with  his  people;  for  Europe  was  on  the  eve  of  the 
most  stirring  events  that  had  occurred  since  the  fall  of 
Napoleon.  France  was  throwing  over,  not  merely  her  old 
dynasty,  but  the  very  principle  of  monarchy  as  well ;  and 
her  example  reacted  on  every  state  of  Germany  as  rapidly 
as  a  spark  ignites  tinder.  The  unwieldy  Diet  at  Frank¬ 
fort  flew  into  a  panic,  and  thought,  when  already  too  late, 
to  regain  its  influence  by  revoking  all  the  objectionable 
measures  it  had  ever  passed  in  the  whole  course  of  its 
existence.  It  declared  for  freedom  of  the  press,  voted  to 
modernize  its  own  organization,  and  asked  for  delegates 
from  all  the  states  to  help  it  in  its  good  work.  The  body 
that  had  once  accepted  the  Carlsbad  decrees  now  adopted 
the  revolutionary  colors  of  red,  black  and  gold,  and  the 
revolutionary  emblem  of  a  gold  eagle  on  a  black  ground. 
The  new  flag  was  soon  floating  over  the  hall  of  assembly  in 
Frankfort.  But  reform  in  the  government  of  Germany 
as  a  whole,  was  as  much  desired  by  the  excited  people  as  a 
reform  in  the  government  of  each  individual  state.  One  of 
the  common  demands  of  all  the  revolutionary  parties  was 


,  STRUGGLE  FOR  CONSTITUTIONAL  GOVERNMENT  345 

•• 

for  a  really  German  parliament  as  opposed  to  the  slack, 
inefficient  Diet. 

In  almost  all  of  the  smaller  German  states  the  revolution 
was  accomplished  without  bloodshed.  The  movement  was 
so  irresistible  that  the  petitions  for  a  constitution,  for  free¬ 
dom  of  the  press,  for  trial  by  jury,  for  the  right  of  the 
people  to  bear  arms,  were  almost  immediately  granted; 
while  a  body  of  fifty-one  men,  informally  constituted,  met 
at  Heidelberg  and  nominated  several  hundred  delegates 
to  form  a  preliminary  or  ante-parliament,  which  should  see 
to  the  calling  of  a  really  national  assembly.  The  govern¬ 
ments  were  preparing  to  call  a  separate  assembly  of  their 
own  for  the  purpose  of  revising  the  articles  of  confedera¬ 
tion,  when  the  radical  course  of  the  revolutions  in  the 
larger  states  put  a  stop  to  their  endeavors. 

In  Bavaria,  the  disorders  were  complicated  by  the  in-  Lola 
fatuation  of  King  Louis  I.  for  the  famous  dancer  Lola  Montez  in 
Montez,— a  woman  who,  to  gain  notoriety,  had  once  taken  Bavaria- 
off  her  shoe  on  the  stage  of  the  Paris  opera  house  and 
thrown  it  at  the  men  who  would  not  applaud  her.  After 
dancing  in  the  capitals  of  the  Old  and  the  New  World,  she 
had  settled  down  in  Munich,  and  induced  the  king  to  make 
her  Countess  of  Lansfeld  and  give  her  a  share  in  public 
affairs.  She  gained  such  ascendency  in  time,  that  minis¬ 
tries  were  dismissed  to  please  her,  and  the  university, —  the 
better-minded  students  of  which  had  attacked  her  infa¬ 
mous  bodyguard,  the  “Alemannia,” —  was  declared  closed. 

It  was  said  that  all  Munich  was  divided  into  two  parties* 
the  ultramontanes,  or  clerical-conservatives,  and  the  Lola- 
montanes,  or  adherents  of  Lola.  The  immediate  effect  of 
the  French  Revolution  was  to  give  the  ascendency  to  the 
leform  party;  and  the  university  was  declared  reopened, 
the  u  Alemannia  dispersed,  and  Lola  told  to  quit  Munich 
at  a  day’s  notice.  A  story  is  recorded  that  shows,  in  an 


The  revo¬ 
lution  in 
Austria. 


340  A  SHORT  HIS17  OF  GERMANY 

almost  ridiculous  way,  ho  tie  of  the  true  revolutionary 
spirit  was  present  in  the  ts  of  these  Bavarians.  After 
Lola’s  hasty  departure,  irowd  was  engaged  in  sacking 
her  villa  when  the  king  appeared,  and  in  a  loud  voice  said, 

«  Spare  my  property !  ”  Then  all  were  silent,  bared  their 
heads,  and  joined  in  the  song :  “  Hail  to  our  king,  all  hail. 
When,  shortly  after,  Louis  foolishly  called  out  the  military 
to  protect  him,  the  crowd  surged  before  his  palace  and 
forced  him  into  calling  an  assembly  of  the  estates,  and 
making  great  concessions, —  the  chief  of  which  was  minis¬ 
terial  responsibility  to  the  people.  The  desire  to  be  near 
Lola  and  the  fear  of  an  inquiry  into  his  disposal  of  state 
funds,  then  forced  him  to  the  great  step  of  abdicating  the 
throne;  and  with  sentimental,  hypocritical  assurances  he 
took  leave  of  his  subjects. 

By  the  rushing  tide  of  revolution  that  spread  so  rapidly 
all  the  way  from  Paris  to  Warsaw,  Austria  and  her  de¬ 
pendencies  were  struck  with  peculiar  violence.  On  the 
3d  of  March,  the  Hungarian  patriot,  Kossuth,  delivered  a 
fiery  speech  in  the  Pressburg  Diet,  declaring  that  only  a 
free  constitution  could  ever  bind  together  the  scattered 
provinces  of  the  monarchy.  The  present  state  of  things, 
he  cried,  was  unendurable;  from  the  charnel  house  of  the 
Vienna  system  was  rising  a  pestilential  vapor  that  para¬ 
lyzed  the  nerves  and  banned  the  intellect;  the  future  of 
the  dynasty  was  being  compromised,  the  foundations  of 
the  edifice  were  crumbling,  and  its  fall  imminent.  In 
Vienna,  police  and  censorship  were  openly  defied,  and 
Kossuth’s  speech  was  widely  read.  As  the  news  came  in 
of  concession  after  conpession  granted  by  the  smaller 
states,  and  of  the  complete  change  of  front  of  the  Frank¬ 
fort  Diet,  the  excitement  grew  to  fever  heat.  Petitions 
poured  in  upon  the  Emperor  F erdinand,  who,  however,  left 
all  responsibility  in  the  hands  of  the  state  conference,  of 


A 


STRUGGLE  FOR  CONSTITUTIONAL  GOVERNMENT  347 

which  Metternich  was  the  leading  spirit.  The  estates  of 
Lower  Austria,  called  to  meet  in  Vienna  on  March  13, 
drew  up  in  the  form  of  an  address  the  moderate  demands 
they  intended  to  make;  while  the  students  of  the  univer¬ 
sity,  who  were  destined  to  play  a  large  part  in  this  whole 
movement,  followed  suit,  sending  a  deputation  to  the 
emperor  himself. 

The  13th  of  March,  1848,  forms  a  sharply  defined 
date  m  the  annals  of  Austria,  for  it  marks  the  fall  of  a 
system  that  had  lasted  a  generation.  On  that  day,  the 
assembly  of  the  Lower  Austrian  estates  was  declared 
opened;  and  an  immense  crowd  of  citizens  and  students 
thronged  round  the  hall  of  meeting.  A  student  read 
aloud  Kossuth’s  speech.  Wild  with  excitement,  the  multi¬ 
tude  demanded  admission  to  the  hall,  and  six  students 
and  six  citizens  were  allowed  to  enter.  But  soon  came 
the  rumor  that  these  twelve  had  been  arrested,  and  that 
the  troops  were  approaching.  The  crowd  burst  into  the 
assembly  room,  and  compelled  the  members  of  the  Diet  to 
send  a  deputation  to  the  emperor.  In  front  of  the  chan¬ 
cery  cries  of  “  Down  with  Metternich!  ”  were  heard.  As 
the  report  that  the  soldiers  were  advancing  became  a 
verity,  the  mob  within  the  hall  of  assembly  took  to  throw¬ 
ing  down  broken  bits  of  furniture  on  the  heads  of  their 
j  assailants,  and  even  wounded  one  of  the  archdukes. 
Then  two  sharp  volleys  rang  out,  and  many  were  killed 
and  wounded;  which  gave  the  signal  for  a  general  arming. 
Everything  depended  on  the  attitude  of  the  state  confer¬ 
ence,  which  had  been  in  session  in  the  castle  for  hours. 
Metternich  tried  to  persuade  the  spokesmen  of  the  people 
that  the  whole  was  merely  a  street  riot,  but  was  told 
proudly,  “  This  is  not  riot,  but  revolution  !  ”  As  a  sop  to 
the  excited  crowd,  it  was  voted  to  revoke  the  censorship 
of  the  press,  and  Metternich  withdrew  to  draw  up  the  act. 


m  i  y 

T  f 

- 


The  fall  of 
Metternich 


348 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


A  constitu¬ 
tion  granted 
to  the 
Austrians. 


Frederick 
William  IV. 
makes  con¬ 
cessions. 


But,  from  the  adjoining  room,  he  heard  how  one  of  the 
deputies  demanded  his  resignation,  and  how  no  one  spoke 
in  his  defence.  With  a  certain  dignity  the  apostle  of  re¬ 
pression  bade  farewell  to  his  office,  and  to  the  scene  of  his 
labors.  He  declared  that,  from  his  own  standpoint,  he  had 
always  labored  for  the  weal  of  the  monarchy.  If  it  was 
the  general  opinion  that  that  monarchy  would  be  endan¬ 
gered  by  his  remaining,  it  was  no  sacrifice  for  him  to  go. 

“  Your  Highness,  we  have  nothing  against  your  person,  but 
everything  against  your  system,”  said  a  civic  deputy, 

“  and  we  must  repeat,  your  abdication  alone  can  save  the 
throne  and  the  monarchy.”  Metternich’s  house  on  the 
Rennweg  was  stormed,  and  he  went  off  in  exile  to  Lon¬ 
don;  whither  he  had  been  preceded  by  Louis  Philippe, 
and  where  he  was  to  be  followed  in  a  few  days  by  the 

brother  and  heir  of  the  king  of  Prussia. 

The  state  conference  then  granted  all  that  the  citizens 
demanded.  A  national  guard  and  a  student  legion  were 
established;  and  the  Emperor  Ferdinand,— who  so  hated  the 
very  word  constitution ,  that  he  is  said  to  have  forbidden 
his  physician  to  employ  it,— was  forced  not  only  to  grant 
one  for  his  whole  monarchy,  but  to  stand  at  the  window 
of  his  palace,  waving  a  banner  of  black,  red,  and  gold. 

Even  more  memorable  than  these  happenings  in  Vienna 
were  the  events  that  were  taking  place  almost  simulta¬ 
neously  in  Berlin.  Never  before  nor  since  has  a  Hohenzol- 
lern  played  such  a  miserable  role  and  been  obliged  to 
submit  to  such  insults  from  his  own  people  as  Frederick 
William  IV.  in  these  tumultuous  days.  Cringing  in  his 
attitude  and  liberal  with  his  promises  when  the  mob 
seemed  in  the  ascendant,  he  adopted  the  haughtiest  tone 

when  sure  of  his  own  safety. 

Although  perceiving,  as  did  every  other  sovereign  of 
Germany,  the  absolute  need  of  making  concessions,  Fred- 


STRUGGLE  FOR  CONSTITUTIONAL  GOVERNMENT  349 


erick  William  lingered  and  affixed  conditions.  His  grant 
of  freedom  of  the  press  was  so  in  the  spirit  of  Metternich, 
that  the  latter  had  been  in  the  act  of  transcribing  it  ver¬ 
bally,  for  the  benefit  of  the  clamoring  Austrians,  at  the 
moment  of  his  downfall.  The  Vienna  revolution  brought 
matters  to  a  climax.  Tumultuous  assemblages  of  the  peo¬ 
ple  were  held  daily  in  that  corner  of  the  Thiergarten 
known  as  the  “Zelten”;  and,  at  last,  the  king  promised 
everything  that  had  been  demanded,  including  a  written 
constitution.  The  so-called  “  Patent  of  March  18th  ” 
called  together  the  united  Diet  for  April  2;  and  this  and 
the  other  concessions  were  announced  in  the  newspapers 
and  by  placards  on  the  wall.  The  people  thronged  the 
streets  and  crowded  into  the  square  of  the  castle,  raising 
cheers  for  the  king,  who  appeared  twice  on  his  balcony  and 
acknowledged  them  with  thanks. 

Just  how  much  sincerity  there  was  on  both  sides  is  hard 
to  establish.  The  crowd  took  it  ill  that  the  castle  was 
strongly  garrisoned  by  troops  from  other  places  than  Ber¬ 
lin, — there  were  cries  of  “  Back  with  the  military!”  As  for 
Frederick  William,  he  tried  in  vain  to  get  rid  of  his  count¬ 


less  guests :  it  was  announced  that  the  king  wished  to 


governor  of  the  castle  appeared  at  the  gate,  and  bade  the 
people  disperse.  At  last  Frederick  William  gave  the  com¬ 


mand  of  his  troops  to  the  determined  General  Von  Pritt- 
witz,  and  bade  him  put  an  end  to  this  “  scandal  ”  in  the 
courtyard.  Assisted  by  Major  Von  Falkenstein,  he  had 
almost  cleared  the  square,  when  the  sound  of  two  shots, 
—  accidentally  discharged  as  is  now  believed,  —  threw  the 
people  into  a  fever  of  excitement.  W ith  cries  of  “  Treason  !  ” 
“Vengeance  !  ”  “  Barricades  !  ”,  the  varied  elements  of  the 
Berlin  population  took  to  arms.  The  pavings  were  torn 
up  and  the  streets  rendered  impassable;  and,  from  the  roofs 


The  shots 
in  the 
castle  yard 
and  the 
barricade 
fights. 


350 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  O*  GERMANY 


and  windows,  missiles,  and  even  vitriol,  were  thrown  down 
on  the  heads  of  the  soldiers;  while  wires  were  drawn  so  as 
to  trip  them  up,  and  glass  strewn  to  wound  them  as  they 
fell.  For  a  day  and  a  half,  the  reign  of  violence  lasted. 
It  was  in  vain  that  the  king  caused  a  white  banner  to  be 
raised  with  the  word  “  misunderstanding  ”  in  great  letters  ; 
in  vain  that  he  issued  a  proclamation  “  to  his  dear  Ber¬ 
liners,”  representing  the  revolution  as  the  work  of  foreign 
agents.  A  wag  placed  the  inscription  “  to  his  dear  Ber¬ 
liners  ”  under  a  piece  of  a  bomb,  fired  by  his  own  soldiers, 
that  had  struck  into  one  of  the  public  fountains.  Nothing 
would  satisfy  the  people  but  the  withdrawal  of  the  troops; 
and  this  at  last  the  king  ordered— intending  them  to  re¬ 
turn  to  the  palace,  but  so  wording  his  command  that,  at  a 
moment  when  the  tide  was  turning  in  their  favor,  they  felt 
obliged  to  retire  from  the  city. 

The  corpses  The  king  was  completely  in  the  power  of  the  populace. 

in  the  No  attempt  was  made  on  his  own  person,  but  a  spectacle 

castle  yard.  was  prepared  for  him  in  the  courtyard  of  his  own  palace 
such  as  few  civilized  monarchs  have  been  called  upon  to 
witness.  Bedded  in  flowers  and  wreathed  with  laurel,  but 
with  their  wounds  laid  bare  to  the  utmost,  the  most  muti¬ 
lated  corpses  of  those  who  had  fallen  in  the  barricade  war 
were  borne  under  his  very  window.  As  the  litters  were 
laid  down  in  the  presence  of  an  immense  crowd,  the  names 
and  circumstances  of  the  victims  were  called  off :  “  Fifteen 
years  old,  shot  at  my  side,  my  only  son!”;  or  again,  “a 
widow,  mother  of  seven  orphans !  ”  The  cry  was  raised, 
that  the  king  must  come  and  see  his  work;  and  as  Fred¬ 
erick  William  delayed,  the  bearers  started  up  the  winding 
stairs  with  their  ghastly  burdens  and  threatened  to  enter 
his  apartment.  At  last,  half  dead  with  fright,  the  king 
appeared  on  the  balcony,  at  his  side  his  invalid  queen,  — -  a 
nonentity  in  history  save  for  this  one  trying  experience. 


V 


STRUGGLE  FOR  CONSTITUTIONAL  GOVERNMENT  351 

u  Take  off  your  hat !  ”  was  shouted  from  below;  and  as  the 
Hohenzollern  bared  his  head  the  corpses  were  thrust  up- 
waid  toward  him.  Bidden  to  come  down,  he  obeyed  and 
bowed  before  the  dead;  while  at  last,  content  with  their 
punishment,  the  crowd  joined  in  the  solemn  strains  of 
“Jesus,  Lover  of  my  Soul.” 

No  further  violence  was  attempted,  save  an  attack  on  the 
palace  of  Prince  William  of  Prussia,  who  was  falsely  sup¬ 
posed  to  have  given  the  signal  to  fire.  In  danger  almost 
of  his  life,  the  object  of  general  execration,  the  future  idol¬ 
ized  emperor  of  united  Germany  fled  in  disguise  to  England, 
and  took  up  his  abode  with  the  Prussian  ambassador,  Bun¬ 
sen.  The  palace  on  Unter  den  Linden  was  only  saved 
from  destruction  by  the  presence  of  mind  of  some  one  who 
wrote  upon  it:  “property  of  the  nation,”  and  by  a  student 
who  pointed  out  that  the  royal  library  would  be  in  danger. 

The  last  and  most  extraordinary  act  in  this  tragedy  of 
humiliated  royalty  began  with  the  posting  of  placards  “  To 
the  German  Nation,”  which  announced  that,  for  the  salva¬ 
tion  of  Germany,  Frederick  William  had  placed  himself  at 
the  head  of  the  whole  fatherland,  and,  on  that  very  day, 
March  21,  would  appear  on  horseback  in  the  midst  of  his 

[people,  bearing  the  “  old  revered  colors  of  the  nation.”  It 
was  the  culminating  triumph  of  the  red,  black,  and  gold. 
One  of  its  banners  waved  from  the  castle  top,  another  was 
borne  before  the  king;  who,  as  did  also  his  princes  and  gen- 

Eerals,  wore  a  band  of  the  same  colors  on  his  arm.  As  he 
rode  through  the  city,  Frederick  William  stopped  at  various 
points  and  made  enthusiastic  addresses  in  favor  of  the 
national  movement.  “  I  wish  no  crown,  no  sovereignty,” 
he  cried,  alluding  to  the  proposal  to  make  him  emperor  of 
Germany;  “I  wish  Germany’s  freedom,  Germany’s  unity. 
I  wish  order,  that  I  swear  to  God  !  ”  and  he  solemnly  raised 
his  right  hand.  A  proclamation  that  same  evening  asked 


5 


The  ride 

through 

Berlin. 


352 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  burial 
of  the 
corpses. 


The  ante- 
parliament 
in  Frank¬ 
fort. 


for  the  confidence  of  the  people,  declaring  that  Prussia 
would  henceforth  be  merged  in  Germany.  Frederick  Will¬ 
iam  later  described  this  ride  through  Berlin  as  “  a  comedy 
which  he  had  been  made  to  play,”  —  one  is  tempted  rather 
to  regard  it  as  a  symptom  of  that  want  of  balance  which 

ended  with  insanity  and  death. 

This  first  exciting  period  of  the  Prussian  revolution 
closed  on  the  22d  of  March,  with  the  burial  of  those  who 
had  fallen  on  the  side  of  the  people.  The  city  was  decked 
in  mourning;  while  black  flags  waved  from  the  city  gates  and 
from  the  roof  of  the  castle.  *  The  two  hundred  or  more 
bodies  were  borne  in  procession  past  the  balcony  on  which 
stood  the  king  with  bared  head.  Bells  were  rung  and 
anthems  chanted ;  and,  inasmuch  as  the  bodies  of  the  fallen 
soldiers  were  not  included,  the  whole  ceremony  resolved 
itself  into  a  triumph  of  the  revolutionary  party.  It  re¬ 
mained  to  be  seen  how  the  Prussian  national  assembly, 
called  to  meet  on  May  22,  would  acquit  itself  of  the  difficult 
task  of  drawing  up  a  suitable  and  acceptable  constitution. 

Meanwhile,  a  few  days  after  the  stirring  scenes  in  Ber¬ 
lin,  the  preliminary  Parliament  had  met  in  Frankfort,  in 
the  old  church  of  St.  Paul’s,  to  settle  the  question  of  a 
constitution  for  all  Germany.  They  were  prepared  to  go 
very  far,  these  five  hundred  delegates  or  appointees  of 
the  self-chosen  committee  of  fifty-one,  and  to  decide 
whether  Germany  should  be  a  republic  or  an  empire. 

The  ante-parliament  was  made  up,  for  the  most  part,  of 
men  who  had  been  before  the  public  eye  ;  and  counted 
many  members  of  local  assemblies.  Among  them,  were 
martyrs  to  the  cause  of  liberty,  like  the  Bavarian  Eisen- 
mann,  who  had  spent  fifteen  years  in  undeserved  impris¬ 
onment,  and  was  now  honored  with  a  torchlight  procession. 
As  a  body  representative  of  ill  Germany,  the  Parliament 
was  a  failure  ;  seeing  tl  Austria  furnished  but  two 


STRUGGLE  FOR  CONSTITUTIONAL  GOVERNMENT  353 

members,  tiny  Baden  seventy-two,  and  Hesse-Darmstadt 
eighty-four.  But  more  serious  than  this  was  the  sharp 
antagonism  that  developed  between  the  monarchical  and 
the  republican  parties.  Scarcely  had  the  ante-parliament 
assembled  in  the  venerable  church  of  St.  Paul’s,  in  Frank¬ 
fort,  when  a  certain  Hecker  came  forward  with  a  number 
of  ai  tides,  the  fifteenth  of  which  demanded  abolition  of 
hereditary  monarchy  and  the  formation  of  a  confedera- 
I  tion  —  after  the  model  of  the  United  States  of  America. 
Foiled  in  his  radical  plans  on  this  arena,  Hecker  became  a 
regular  demagogue.  He  raised  a  revolt  in  Baden  which 
cost  several  hundred  persons  their  lives  or  their  liberty. 

.The  ante-parliament  kept  to  its  programme,  declared  for 
a  national  assembly  to  be  formed  by  direct  popular  election, 
and  appointed  a  committee  to  take  the  matter  in  hand.  It 
did  indeed  make  the  important  pronouncement  that  the 
decision  regarding  a  constitution  for  Germany  was  to  be 
the  affair  simply  and  solely  of  the  national  assembly.  It 
would  have  been  wiser,  as  the  future  showed,  to  pay  some 
regard  to  the  actual  governing  powers  in  the  separate 
states.  As  yet  there  was  no  conflict.  The  governments 
showed  no  hostility  to  the  national  assembly,  which  met  in 
Frankfort  on  May  18  ;  while  the  Diet  even  sent  it  greeting. 
The  members  this  time  had  been  chosen  from  all  Ger¬ 
many  —  theoretically  one  from  every  fifty-five  thousand  of 
the  population.  They  considered  themselves  empowered 
to  make  great  and  permanent  changes.  They  were,  for  the 
most  part,  men  of  ability,  among  them  venerable  figures 
like  Arndt  and  Jahn,  who  were  the  objects  of  enthusiastic 
ovations.  In  the  first  session  Arndt  was  called  to  the  plat¬ 
form,  and  a  motion  passed  that,  in  the  light  of  recent  events, 
he  should  be  invited  to  write  a  stanza  to  his  famous  old  song, 
“What  is  the  German’s  Fatherland?”  On  the  whole,  the 
tone  of  the  assembly  was  moderate,  and,  in  a  time  of  great 

VOL.  II  —  2  a. 


The 

national 
parliament 
in  Frank¬ 
fort. 


354 


A  GHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Initial 
errors  of  the 
Frankfort 
Parliament. 


ferment,  much  was  hoped  for  from  its  action.  Its  choice  as 
first  president  of  Heinrich  von  Gagern,  a  famous  minister 
of  Hesse-Darmstadt,  was  generally  approved. 

Unfortunately,  no  draft  of  a  constitution  had  been  pre¬ 
pared,  and  the  assembly  lost  five  valuable  weeks  before  it 
could  take  the  matter  in  hand  at  all,  —  the  only  important 
vote  being  one  in  favor  of  a  national  fleet,  for  which  six 
million  thalers  were  appropriated.  Then  came  the  unfor¬ 
tunate  choice  of  the  Austrian  Archduke  John  as  provisional 
head  of  the  nation.  There  were  legends  of  his  great  devo¬ 
tion  to  the  cause  of  a  common  German  fatherland.  He  was 
quoted  as  having  once  proposed  the  toast  :  “  No  Prussia, 
no  Austria  — one  united  Germany  !  ”  He  was  believed, 
because  he  had  married  the  daughter  of  a  Styrian  postmaster, 
to  be  democratic  in  his  views.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  m  his 
insincerity,  his  intolerance,  his  one-sidedness,  he  was  a 
true  scion  of  the  Hapsburgs  ;  and  the  mere  fact  that  an 
Austrian  had  been  chosen  to  the  highest  office,  if  only  a 
temporary  one,  of  the  German  nation,  was  a  blow  to  the  pride 
of  Prussia,  which  might  be  pardoned  but  not  forgotten. 

But  the  greatest  error  of  the  Frankfort  assembly  was  to 
begin  its  debates  on  the  constitution  with  a  discussion  of 
the  fundamental  rights  of  the  German  man,  a  list  of  which 
had  been  drawn  up  in  a  hundred  paragraphs.  Days  passed 
into  weeks  and  weeks  into  months,  while  the  Parliament 
was  still  busy  with  underlying  principles,  and  with  disputed 
points  of  political  economy ;  and  while  enemies  within  and 
without  were  rising  against  it.  The  iron  that  might  once 
have  been  readily  tempered  was  rapidly  growing  cold. 
Moreover,  various  factors  came  in  to  distract  attention  from 
the  matter  in  hand,  —  a  war  with  Denmark,  an  uprising  m 
Frankfort  itself,  increased  rivalry  between  Austria  and 
Prussia,  and  bloody  happenings  in  both  of  those  states. 

It  was  now  that  the  question  of  Schleswig-Holstein,  which 


STRUGGLE  FOR  CONSTITUTIONAL  GOVERNMENT  355 

was  later  to  be  so  interwoven  with  the  most  fateful  events 
of  German  history,  first  began  to  assume  importance. 
These  two  provinces  in  the  extreme  northwest  of  Germany 
belonged,  one  to  Denmark,  the  other  to  the  German  Con¬ 
federation,  and  yet  for  centuries  had  been  considered 
indivisible.  Efforts  on  the  part  of  successive  kings  to  incor¬ 
porate  them  in  Denmark,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  vast 
majority  of  the  inhabitants  were  German,  led  to  a  revolu¬ 
tion,  in  which  Prussia,  at  the  bidding  of  Archduke  John, 
took  the  side  of  the  insurgents.  Her  general,  Wrangel, 
stormed  the  Danewerk,  penetrated  into  Jutland,  and  could 
have  brought  the  Danish  king  to  terms  but  for  a  change  in 
the  policy  of  Frederick  William  IV.,  whose  feelings  had 
been  worked  upon  by  the  Czar,  as  well  as  by  England.  The 
leading  minister  of  the  latter  country,  Lord  Palmerston, 
had  declared  that,  were  he  to  meet  the  red-black-golden  flag 
at  sea,  he  would  treat  it  as  the  flag  of  a  pirate.  Frederick 
William  was  fast  receding  from  his  recent  liberal  position. 
He  was  tired  of  this  alliance  with  revolutionists ;  and  he 
finally  consented  to  the  seven  months’  truce  of  Malmo,  in 
which  the  advantages  were  overwhelmingly  on  the  side  of 
Denmark. 

The  Parliament  of  Frankfort  felt  outraged  by  this  act,  as 
well  as  by  the  fact  that  its  envoy  had  not  been  admitted  to 
the  conferences ;  and  only  refrained  from  refusing  to  ratify 
the  truce,  from  the  consideration  that,  with  Prussia  as  an 
enemy  and  Austria  cool  and  indifferent,  the  Parliament 
would  have  no  forces  at  its  disposal  at  all,  save  the  con¬ 
tingents  of  the  minor  states.  The  people  of  Frankfort 
were  less  philosophical.  In  the  abandonment  of  the 
duchies  they  saw  the  holy  cause  of  liberty  betrayed. 
Representatives  who  had  preached  moderation,  among 
them  old  Father  Jahn,  were  chased,  insulted,  and  even 
struck.  One  session  of  the  Parliament  was  interrupted 


The  begin¬ 
ning  of  the 
Schleswig- 
Holstein 
difficulties. 


Riot  in 
Frankfort. 


356 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The 

problem 
of  the 
Austrian 
depend¬ 
encies. 


Windisch- 

gratz 

retakes 

Vienna. 


and  barricades  arose  in  the  streets.  Troops  were  called 
in,  and  the  authorities  remained  masters  of  the  situation  ; 
though  at  the  cost  of  many  lives.  Foul  and  dastardly 
was  the  murder,  by  citizens,  of  two  men  of  eminence,  —  the 
Silesian  representative,  Prince  Lichnowsky,  and  his  friend 
and  companion,  General  von  Auerswald.  Lichnowsky  had 
been  tied  to  a  tree,  and  made  the  target  for  all  sorts  of 
missiles. 

It  was  under  the  gloomy  shadow  of  these  events  that 
the  Frankfort  assembly,  at  last,  proceeded  to  the  actual 
task  of  debating  upon  a  constitution.  The  very  first  arti¬ 
cles,  concerning  the  territory  to  be  included  in  the  new 
political  creation,  involved  the  assembly  in  a  nest  of  diffi¬ 
culties  :  Should  Austria  be  allowed  to  join  the  proposed 
empire  with  all  her  non-German  dependencies?  Would 
Italians,  Croatians,  Hungarians,  and  Czechs  be  likely  to 
obey,  or  even  to  understand,  laws  made  for  them  in  Frank¬ 
fort  by  a  German  assembly  ?  Must  the  Diet  interfere  in 
every  small  Slavonic  quarrel  ?  Austria’s  alternative  was 
to  abandon  the  idea  of  her  own  unity,  and  enter  the  new 
organization  for  a  part  only  of  her  lands,  —  on  the  adoption 
of  this  alternative  Prussia  insisted. 

The  fall  of  Metternich  was  far  from  ending  the  dis¬ 
turbances  in  Austria.  The  government  was  able  in  June, 
1848,  to  put  down  the  revolution  in  Prague,  the  imperial 
general,  Prince  Windischgratz,  having  bombarded  the  city. 
Against  the  Hungarians,  J ellachicli  —  a  Croatian  noble¬ 
man  — was  intrusted  with  the  command ;  while  in  Austrian 
Italy,  Radetzky  gained  the  victory  of  Custozza.  Every¬ 
where  the  star  of  the  Hapsburgs  seemed  in  the  ascend¬ 
ent  ;  and,  in  the  capital  itself,  the  inexcusable  violence  of 
the  rabble  gave  occasion  for  successful  interference. 
The  constitution  promulgated  almost  immediately  after 
Metternich’s  fall  had  not  been  satisfactory.  During-  the 


STRUGGLE  FOR  CONSTITUTIONAL  GOVERNMENT  357  |! 

month  of  May,  riots  and  tumults  occurred ;  the  emperor 
e  rom  the  city,  and,  for  a  time,  the  students  of  the 
university  had  practical  control  of  the  government. 

ai  y  in  cto  er,  Hungarian  sympathizers  murdered 
General  Bredy  and  hung  the  minister  of  war,  Baron 
Latour,  to  a  lamp-post,  after  inflicting  upon  him  forty 
wounds.  The  Emperor  Ferdinand,  who  had  taken  refuge  f 

in  Olmutz,  endowed  Prince  Windischgratz  with  extraor¬ 
dinary  powers,  and  sent  him  against  Vienna,  where  the 
new  constitutional  Diet  was  in  session.  « I  do  not  treat 
with  rebels,”  Windischgratz  declared,  from  the  begin¬ 
ning,  and  he  gruffly  repulsed  two  members  of  the  Frank¬ 
fort  Parliament  who  came  to  mediate.  Before  the  end  of 
ctober,  the  city  was  taken  by  storm  and  treated  as  con¬ 
quered  territory.  Countless  arrests  were  made  and  a 
number  of  persons  were  executed,— among  them  Robert 
Blum  one  of  the  envoys  of  the  Frankfort  Parliament, 
who  had,  indeed,  done  his  best  to  further  the  opposition 
to  the  government.  The  Frankfort  Assembly  entered  its 
protest  against  the  act  and  demanded  reparation,  but  with 
n.p  result.  It  is  believed,  indeed,  that  the  very  fact  of 
Blu-jn’s  belonging  to  that  body,  had  made  Windischgratz 
the  mpre  bitter  against  him.  The  hey-day  of  the  revolu- 
tion  wa?s  already  past. 

If  the,  course  of  the  Frankfort  national  assembly  and  Radical 
the  Austn  an  constitutional  assembly  had  not  been  smooth,  measures 
still  less  so  ham, been  that  of  the  Prussian  national  Parlia- 
ment,  which  met  ,in  Berlin  two  months  after  the  barricade  Moment 
fights.  The  government  treated  the  assembly  with  re-  ariament' 
spect,  and  laid  propositions  before  it  as  to  the  nature  of  - 
the  proposed  constitution.  The  fact  that  the  new  head 
of  the  ministry,  Camphausen,  and  the  new  minister  of 
finance,  Hansemann,  were  liberals,  seemed  to  augur  well 
for  the  success  of  the  deliberations.  But,  if  ever  a  move- 

1  \ 


I 


/ 


i 


358 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


'N- 

0 


ment  failed  through  the  folly  of  its  own  pro —  ^ 
fr0“  first  wounds  caused  by  the 

barricade*3 fights V  Yet,  in  July,  a  ^  “  ^ZC 

had  Tghi  of  t 

SerJ  ivt  a  very1  narrow ^vote  escaped  being  passed.  A 

and  only  by  a  very  nan  minister  of  war 

month  later,  it  was  decreed  that  the  ™  officers 

should  be  instructed  L  Com- 

to  enter  into  conflicts  of  y  constitutional 

manding  them  to  show  then  sjmp  y^  ^  minister 

t%r  LrdecL,  *. 

fell.  The  assembly  t®;rinXeverffirst0articiae,  -which 
drafting  the  constatutm  ,  t  to  leave  out 

‘h„ru  cTsr,:Xw“Ll“»wa«=<> ti«„ 

200  against  lod,  noDi  y  bestowed.  Members 

“ho  voted  rtrarT  toXradical  element 

meeting  itself ;  once,  they  stormed  the  arsenal,  an  d  car- 

ripd  off  the  more  valuable  guns.  .  ■ 

One  cannot  blame  Frederick  William  IV.  for  turning 
toow  hireyei^e  old'safeguard  of  Hohenzollem  prerogative, 

of  the  ;he  Prussian  army.  The  truce  of  Malmg  had  just  been 
Prussian  .  with  Denmark,  General  Wrang'el  and  his  tioops 

Parliament.  foee  They  were  ordered  to  draw  closer  to  Berlin. 

\  ,  .  The  half-liberal  ministry  that  had  followed  that  of  Camp- 

t  -t^ausen  was  replaced  by  a  conservative  one,  under  Count 
\  ’  i  Brandenburg,  an  illegitimate  son  of  *  redenck  William  II. 

A  nrotest  of  the  assembly  against  this  nomination  gave 
rise  to  a  stormy  scene.  “  We  are  here  to  give  your 


STRUGGLE  FOR  CONSTITUTIONAL  GOVERNMENT  359 

Majesty  oral  information  about  the  true  condition  of  the 
land ;  will  your  Majesty  hear  us?  ”  cried  one  of  the  dele¬ 
gates  sent  to  Potsdam.  As  Frederick  William  walked 
away,  he  cried  after  him,  “  That  is  just  the  misfortune  of 
kings,  that  they  will  not  hear  the  truth  !  ”  At  last,  on 
November  8,  a  royal  decree  prorogued  the  assembly,  and 
ordered  it  to  meet  again  in  the  town  of  Brandenburg. 
Berlin  was  declared  in  a  state  of  siege.  The  assembly 
pronounced  such  acts  unlawful ;  but,  two  days  later,  was 
expelled  from  its  hall  by  WTangel.  To  a  deputation 
from  the  so-called  citizen  guard,  which  declared  that  it 
would  yield  only  to  force,  the  rough  old  general,  sitting 
on  a  chair  in  the  street,  had  merely  answered  :  uTell  your 
citizen  guard  that  force  is  now  there.”  He  had  given  the 
Parliament  exactly  fifteen  minutes  in  which  to  vacate  the 
premises.  At  a  hasty  meeting,  held  in  another  place, 

;  the  ministers  were  forbidden  to  dispose  of  state  funds  or 
to  levy  taxes.  But  the  king  was  determined  now  to  carry 
the  fight  to  the  bitter  end,  even  if  it  were  to  cost  him  his 
throne.  Fortunately  for  him,  the  better  elements  of  the 
population  were  now  on  his  side.  When,  on  the  day  ap¬ 
pointed,  the  Parliament,  in  great  minority,  met  in  Branden¬ 
burg,  it  was  declared  dissolved  ;k  and  the  king  announced, 
that  he  would  impose  his  own  constitution  upon  the  peopled 
This,  to  the  joy  of  all  moderate  men,  proved  to  be  more 
liberal  than  any  one  had  expected  —  so  liberal,  indeed,  that 
Frederick  William  wrote  characteristically  to  Bunsen,  it 
made  his  own  stomach  ache.  The  separate  clauses  were  to 
be  revised  by  the  representatives  themselves  ;  and  not  until 
January,  1850,  was  the  work  completed  and  the  constitu¬ 
tion  as  a  whole  adopted.  The  more  radical  elements  had 
been  kept  in  check  by  the  so-called  three-class  system  of 
voting  at  parliamentary  elections  :  the  small  body  of  the 
large  taxpayers  could  choose  the  same  number  of  electors 

t 


'4 


Frederick 
William’s 
new  con¬ 
stitution. 


360 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


as  the  larger  body  of  moderately  rich  persons,  or  as  the 
largest  body  of  the  lower  classes.  On  the  other  hand,  a 
number  of  personal  liberties  and  checks  to  tyianny  were 
assured.  A  reaction,  indeed,  soon  set  in,  and,  duiing  the 
next  few  years,  under  one  pretext  or  another,  the  king 
managed  to  pursue  a  most  repressive  policy.  Nor  was  the 
Prussian  court  alone  in  this  matter,  Austria  going  so  far 
as  to  entirely  abrogate  her  newly  granted  constitution. 
rpke  Meanwhile  at  Frankfort,  in  the  matter  of  pairing  German 

Austrian  unity  with  liberal  institutions,  the  hopes  of  the  patriots 
question  at  had  been  sadly  hashed ;  the  blame  for  the  failure  of  the 
Franktort.  ^  negotiations  falling,  mainly,  upon  Austria  and  Prussia. 

It  was,  indeed,  one  of  the  most  difficult  of  all  political 
problems  to  which  the  formulation  of  the  second  article  of 
the  Frankfort  constitution  gave  rise,  — -  declaring,  as  it  did, 
that  a  power  might  not  enter  the  German  empire  save  with 
its  German  provinces  alone.  This  meant,  for  Austria,  either 
national  disruption,  or  total  exclusion  from  the  new  organ¬ 
ization.  Yet  the  standpoint  of  the  Frankfort  assembly  was 
more  than  comprehensible.  It  was  the  only  rational  one 
possible  of  adoption.  Here  was  Austria,  with  a  population, 
largely  un-German,  of  thirty-eight  millions,  demanding  en¬ 
trance  into  an  empire  which,  without  her,  would  number 
but  thirty-two  millions.  It  meant  an  absolute  Austrian 
majority  in  the  parliaments ;  it  meant  that  the  most  vital 
questions  of  German  policy  must  be  voted  upon  by  strange- 
tongued  peoples  on  the  banks  of  the  Theiss,  the  Moldau,  or 
the  Po ;  it  meant  the  renunciation  of  every  hope  of  real 


Austria 
takes  a  high 
tone  at 
Frankfort. 


German  unity. 

Austria,  though  vague  in  her  utterances  and  dilatory  in 
her  tactics,  and  though  offering  no  solution  of  the  real  prob¬ 
lem,  was  very  tenacious  of  her  position.  At  Ivremsier,  in 
November,  1848,  her  ministers  formulated  the  sentiment: 
“  The  continuance  of  Austria’s  national  unity  is  a  necessity 


v 


i 


I 


STRUGGLE  FOR  CONSTITUTIONAL  GOVERNMENT  361 

for  Geimany  as  well  as  for  Europe.’'  In  December  came  a 
threatening  note  from  Olmiitz  declaring  that:  “Austria  will 
know  how  to  maintain  her  position  in  the  projected  Ger¬ 
man  body  politic.  The  Austrian  delegates  at  Frankfort 
founded  a  party  known  as  the  G-rossdeutsche,  or  advocates 
of  a  greater  Germany;  and  allied  themselves  with  those 
liberals,  who  were  opposed  to  any  monarchical  state  at  all. 
There  is  little  doubt  but  that,  in  secret,  the  court  of  Vienna 
favored  an  Austrian  empire,  of  which  Germany  should  be 
merely  an  appendage. 

The  general  sentiment  of  the  leaspprejudiced  minds  at 
Frankfort  was  in  favor  of  a  narrower  association,  in  which 
Austria  should  have  no  part ;  and,  at  the  same  time,  of 
another,  broader,  union  which  should  assure  her  all  possi¬ 
ble  safeguards  and  privileges.  They  were  growing  very 
tiled,  these  reformers,  of  having  their  earnest  work  per¬ 
sistently  ignored;  “  Waiting  for  Austria  means  death  to 
German  unity,”  declared  one  of  the  ministers,  Beckerath. 
Gagern  finally  procured  a  vote,  authorizing  the  ministry 
to  treat  with  Austria,  as  with  an  extraneous  power,  by 
means  of  envoys. 

The  second  important  question:  What,  with  or  with¬ 
out  Austria,  should  be  the  form  of  the  new  political 
creation,  and  what  the  nature  of  its  head  ?  gave  rise  to 
equally  divergent  views,  and  to  equally  violent  opposition. 
Should  there  be  an  emperor,  a  directory,  or  a  president  ? 
Tf  an  emperor,  should  his  dignity  be  hereditary  or  for 
life,  or  for  three  or  six  or  twelve  years,  or  should  it  be 
shared  in  rotation  by  Austria  and  Prussia  ?  The  vote  to 
confer  the  headship  of  the  nation  on  one  of  the  ruling 
German  princes  was  finally  passed,  the  vote  to  make  the 
dignity  hereditary,  rejected.  In  February,  1849,  a  note 
from  the  Austrian  government  formally  protested  against 
the  notion  that  an  Austrian  emperor  and  his  government 


Republic  or 
empire  ? 


362 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  crown 
of  the 
empire  to 
be  offered 
to  Fred¬ 
erick 
William. 


Frederick 
William 
and  the 
German 
question. 


should  subordinate  themselves  to  a  central  power  wielded 
by  any  other  German  prince.  Soon  afterward  the  feeble 
and  yielding  emperor,  Ferdinand,— who  had  made  promises 
he  could  neither  keep  nor  well  revoke, -resigned  m  favor 
of  a  youth  of  eighteen,  that  Francis  Joseph  who  still,  in 

ripe  old  age,  holds  the  throne. 

Behind  Francis  Joseph  was  a  government  determined 

to  fight  the  revolution  to  the  very  utmost.  In  March, 
1849,  a  new  constitution,  which  centralized  the  adminis¬ 
tration  to  the  last  degree,  was  imposed  upon  all  Austrian 
lands.  This  was  the  crisis,  this  Austria  s  answer  and 
final  challenge  to  the  Frankfort  assembly :  she  would 
enter  the  Confederation  with  all  of  her  provinces  or  not 
at  all ;  and  the  new  empire,  if  empire  there*Was  to  be  must 
take  its  measures  accordingly.  Representative  Welc  er 
up  to  this  moment  one  of  the  heads  o  t  e  us >  nan 
•‘greater  German”  party  — now  made  a  motion,  that  the 
constitution,  as  it  stood,  should  be  adopted  by  a  smg 
vote,  and  the  hereditary  imperial  dignity  be  offered  to 
the  kino-  of  Prussia.  The  motion  as  offered  was  defeated 
by  a  slight  majority  ;  but  by  sacrificing  the  clause  relat¬ 
ing  to  the  power  of  absolute  veto,  the  rest  of  the  section 
concerning  the  headship  of  the  empire  was  passed.  it 
was  a  solemn  moment  when  the  result  was  announced. 
“  May  the  genius  of  Germany  preside  over  this  hour,  was 
the  invocation  of  the  Parliament’s  president ;  and,  when 
three  cheers  were  given  for  the  “  German  emperor,  they 
were  taken  up  by  the  dense  crowds  in  the  streets,  and  a 

the  churches  rang  out  their  chimes. 

The  deputation  that  left  Frankfort  for  Berlin,  on  March 
30,  1849,  had  a  most  important  mission  to  perform. 
Could  Frederick  William  be  induced  to  subscribe  to  the 
Frankfort  constitution  and  accept  the  imperia  crown, 
the  future  of  Germany  was  assured ;  though,  possibly,  a 


STRUGGLE  FOR  CONSTITUTIONAL  GOVERNMENT  363 


the  cost  of  a  war  with  Austria.  Twenty-eight  of  the 
minor  states  had  already  promised  their  sanction  to  the 
new  constitution.  Others  would  be  likely  to  follow  Prus¬ 
sia’s  lead.  And  Frederick  William  had  at  various  times 
so  acted  as  to  strengthen  the  hopes  of  the  liberals.  They 
could  not  know  of  his  frequent  changes  of  mind,  of  his 
weak  susceptibility  to  new  influences,  of  the  incipient 
disease  that  was  preying  upon  his  brain. 

In  184T,  Frederick  William  had  been  ready  to  settle  the 
German  question  “  with  Austria,  without  Austria,  yes,  if 
need  be,  against  Austria.”  In  March,  1848,  he  had  pro¬ 
claimed  his  intention  of  placing  himself  at  the  head  of  the 
movement  for  a  united  Germany,  and  had  ridden  around 
under  the  shadow  of  the  revolutionary  banners.  But,  soon 
afterward,  he  declared  to  a  deputation  from  the  Rhine  prov¬ 
inces:  “  I  am  only  the  second  in  Germany;”  and  wrote  to  the 
historian  Dahlmann,  that  none  other  than  the  “  archhouse  of 
Austria  ”  could  ever  be  at  the  head  of  the  united  fatherland. 

He  meant  to  retain  for  himself,  indeed,  the  command  over 
the  German  military  forces,  — failing  to  see  how  impossible 
of  acceptance  such  a  proposition  would  be  to  Austria. 

With  the  Parliament  of  Frankfort,  his  relations  had  Frederick 

been  similarly  undetermined.  “  Do  not  forget,  gentle-  William 

men,”  he  had  cried  to  a  deputation  sent  to  assist  at  the 

„  .  i  „  Frankfort 

opening  ot  the  Cologne  cathedral,  “do  not  forget  that  parlia- 

there  are  still  princes  in  Germany,  and  that  I  am  one  of  ment. 
them  !  ”  On  the  following  day,  however,  he  had  drunk 
a  toast  to  “  the  builders  of  the  great  work,  the  present 
and  the  absent  members  of  the  Frankfort  national  assem¬ 
bly.”  His  enthusiasm  had  then  received  a  rude  shock 
through  the  September  uprising  and  the  murder  of  the 
deputies,  Lichnowsky  and  Auerstadt ;  and  more  and  more 
there  settled  down  upon  him  a  horror  of  revolution,  and 
of  everything  therewith  connected. 


i 


364 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Frederick 
William’s 
views  as  to 
the  offer  of 
the  im¬ 
perial 
crown. 


He  stood  very  much  alone  at  this  time,  except  for  a 
faction  of  insignificant  flatterers.  His  ministry,  at  the 
head  of  which  was  still  Count  Brandenburg,  was  in  favor 
of  conciliation,  and  received  the  Frankfort  deputation 
with  warmth.  His  friend  and  confidant,  Bunsen,  who  was 
filling  the  post  of  ambassador  to  England,  had  urged  him 
continually  to  accept  the  crown  whenever  it  should  be 
offered ;  and  had  prevailed  upon  him,  in  J anuary,  to  send 
a  note  to  Frankfort,  which  showed  him  in  sympathy  with 
the  plans  under  consideration  there.  Three  weeks  later, 
Austrian  influences  had  completely  changed  the  king’s 
mood ;  and  a  second  note  showed  an  entirely  different 
standpoint.  In  one  of  his  pessimistic  attacks,  Frederick 
William  had  written  to  Bunsen  a  letter  which  well  shows 
the  hysterical,  extravagant  side  of  his  character,  as  well  as 
his  bitter  hatred  of  everything  republican.  Bunsen  had 
assured  him  that,  although  the  offer  of  the  crown  might 
come  originally  from  a  popular  assembly,  the  princes  and 
governments  of  Germany  would  be  sure  to  sanction  its 
acceptance.  But  Frederick  William  wrote  back,  that  he 
wanted  neither  the  crown  itself  nor  a  subsequent  consent 
of  the  princes.  The  kind  of  crown  he  would  be  willing 
to  wear  was  not  such  a  one  as  a  revolutionary  assembly 
could  give,  —  not  picked  from  the  gutter  like  that  of 
Louis  Philippe,  but  carrying  God’s  mark  and  making  its 
bearer  king  by  His  grace  :  u  The  crown  which  the  Ottos, 
the  Hohenstaufens,  the  Hapsburgs  have  worn,  a  Flohen- 
zollern  can  naturally  also  wear  ;  it  does  him  unspeakable 
honor  with  its  thousand-year  halo.  The  one  which  you 
mean,  alas,  dishonors  him  unspeakably  with  its  carrion 
odor  of  the  revolution  of  1848.”  With  floods  of  invective, 
the  king  goes  on  to  castigate  this  “  imaginary  crown, 
wrought  of  filth  and  mire.”  “  I  speak  plainly,”  he  writes  : 
“if  the  thousand-year  crown  of  the  German  nation,  in 


STRUGGLE  FOR  CONSTITUTIONAL  GOVERNMENT  365 

/ 

abeyance  now  these  forty-two  years,  is  again  to  be  given 
away,  it  is  I  and  my  likes  who  will  give  it.” 

His  reception  of  the  Frankfort  deputation  was  cool  in 
the  extreme.  An  audience  was  granted,  but  no  court  car¬ 
riages  were  sent  to  bring  the  members  to  the  palace  —  an 
omission  which  the  city  of  Berlin  hastily  supplied.  The 
very  lackeys  in  the  anteroom  were  insolent,  one  of  them 
refusing  to  bring  a  glass  of  water  for  the  president,  until 
ordered  imperatively  to  do  so.  The  king  delivered  his 
address  very  formally,  standing,  in  uniform,  surrounded 
by  the  princes,  ministers,  generals,  and  court  functionaries* 
He  had  carried  his  conscience  to  the  King  of  kings,  he 
declared,  and  had  decided  that,  not  onty  must  he  await  the 
consent  of  the  princes,  before  accepting  the  crown,  but, 
also,  must  determine  with  them  whether  the  present  form 
of  the  constitution  was  acceptable  to  one  and  all.  With 
actual  tears  in  their  eyes,  the  deputation  withdrew;  these 
men  knew  well  that,  if  thirty-six  different  autocratic  gov¬ 
ernments  might  pick  and  tear  at  their  work,  not  much  of  it 
would  survive.  Before  taking  their  departure,  they  framed 
a  writing  which  declared  that,  since  his  Majesty  denied 
all  right  of  existence  or  binding  force  to  the  national  con¬ 
stitution,  he  must  be  considered  as  having  refused  the 
proffered  election. 

Frederick  William  still  dallied  for  a  while  with  the 
national  assembly,  and  summoned  all  the  governments  to 
send  plenipotentiaries  to  Frankfort  to  discuss  the  matter 
—  a  summons  which  not  one  of  them  obeyed.  Austria, 
meanwhile,  had  withdrawn  her  delegates ;  declaring  that 
never  would  she  bow  to  foreign  legislation,  never  would 
her  emperor  subordinate  himself  to  another  prince.  “  For 
us,  the  national  assembly  no  longer  exists,”  —  so  wrote  her 
ministers  in  an  official  note  to  Berlin.  At  this  very  time, 
the  Prussian  lower  house  voted  to  accept  the  constitution. 


The  recep¬ 
tion  of  the 
Frankfort 
deputation. 


Austria  and 
Prussia 
against  the 
Frankfort 
Parliament. 


366 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Rebellions 
in  Saxony, 
Baden, 
and  the 
Palatinate. 


Saxony. 


Saxony  and  Wiirtemberg  seemed  wavering;  while  the 
national  assembly  sent  out  its  demand  for  recognition 
almost  in  the  form  of  an  ultimatum.  Frederick  William 
came  forward  now  with  a  categorical  refusal  of  the  im¬ 
perial  dignity.  He  had  already  sent  an  adjutant  to  the 
king  of  Saxony  to  harden  the  latter’s  heart  against  the 
adherents  of  the  Parliament,  and  to  offer  armed  assistance, 
should  such  be  needed.  He  summoned  a  conference  to 
Berlin  of  such  governments  as  might  care,  in  view  of  the 
mistaken  steps  that  the  national  assembly  had  taken,  and 
seemed  inclined  still  to  take,  to  deliberate  concerning 
the  needs  of  the  nation.  “  The  Prussian  government,”  so 
ran  the  circular  note,  “  cannot  conceal  the  scantiness  of 
the  hope,  that  the  national  assembly  will  lend  its  hand  to 
altering  the  constitution  on  which  it  has  determined. 
The  official  Staatsanzeiger  began  openly  to  speak  of  the 
parliament  as  of  a  “revolutionary  ”  assembly. 

All  this  reacted  violently  upon  the  Parliament  itself,  and 
gave  rise  to  factions  which  were  its  final  ruin.  The  “left” 
was  in  favor  of  encouraging  an  armed  uprising  among 
the  people.  The  “  right,”  determined  on  using  a  purely 
persuasive  means,  put  through  a  vote  to  hold  elections  for 
a  new  constituent  assembly,  which  should  confer  the  crown 
upon  the  king  of  Prussia  so  soon  as  he  should  have  recog¬ 
nized  the  constitution.  Not  unnaturally,  the  political 
agitation  spread  to  the  constituents  of  the  members  of 
Parliament.  Addresses,  words  of  advice,  of  encouragement, 
of  blame,  poured  in  upon  the  different  rulers ;  and  at  last, 
in  three  states,  —  in  Saxony,  in  the  Rhine  Palatinate,  and 
in  Baden,  —  the  flames  of  discontent  broke  out  into  actual 
rebellion. 

In  Dresden,  where  the  dissolution  of  the  chambers  and 
a  ministerial  crisis  had  brought  excitement  to  the  highest 
pitch,  the  government,  on  the  third  of  May,  forbade  a 


STRUGGLE  FOR  CONSTITUTIONAL  GOVERNMENT  367 

piojected  parade  in  honor  of  the  national  constitution. 
The  crowd  surrounded  the  arsenal  and  the  palace,  and  the 
king  fled  to  the  impregnable  Ronigstein.  His  ministers 
accompanied  him ;  but  returned,  the  same  evening,  to  find 
a  provisional  government  set  up,  the  head  of  which  was 
an  extreme  radical,  Tzschirner.  The  advent  of  Prussian 
troops  at  once  put  a  stop  to  the  movement,  and  the  ring¬ 
leaders  were  punished  with  long  imprisonment. 

In  the  Palatinate,  and  in  Baden  also,  the  existing  gov¬ 
ernments  were  displaced.  In  Baden  the  military  were 
drawn  into  the  vortex,  and  the  most  republican  designs 
weie  cherished  ;  the  neighborhood  of  two  popularly  gov¬ 
erned  states  like  I  ranee  and  Switzerland  being  of  especial 
influence.  Recognition  of  the  imperial  constitution  was 
written  on  the  banner  of  the  insurgents,  but  “  without  the 
hereditary  head.”  It  was  in  this  struggle  that  the  then 
crown  prince  of  Prussia,  later  Emperor  Wdlliam  I.,  gained 
his  spurs  as  a  leader  of  armies.  In  response  to  a  call 
for  aid  from  Bavaria  and  Baden,  Frederick  William  sent 
two  army  corps  under  William’s  command.  The  revo¬ 
lutionary  forces,  which  combined  against  the  Prussians 
and  took  numerous  foreigners  into  their  service,  numbered 
between  thirty  and  forty  thousand  men.  Commander-in- 
chief  was  Mieroslawski,  a  famous  Polish  refugee.  It 
needed  many  skirmishes,  and  a  regular  bombardment  of 
the  fortress  of  Rastadt,  before  this  perfectly  hopeless  and 
meaningless  rebellion  could  be  put  down.  Many  lost 
their  lives  on  these  petty  battlefields ;  many  were  after¬ 
ward  sentenced  to  death  or  imprisonment.  The  poet 
Kinkel  was  given  a  life  sentence;  but  was  rescued  from 
the  fortress  of  Spandau  by  Carl  Schurz,  who  afterward 
became  a  shining  light  in  the  political  firmament  of  the 
United  States  of  America. 

If  the  cause  of  the  Parliament  of  Frankfort  had  long 


i 

I 


Prince 
William’s 
campaign 
in  Baden. 


368 


A  SHORT  H.  ^uKY  OF  GERMANY 


Secessions 
from  the 
Frankfort 
Parliament. 


Expulsion 
and  end 
of  the 
Frankfort 
Parliament. 


been  losing  ground,  these  revolts  and  tlieir  successful  sup¬ 
pression  gave  it  its  coup  de  grace.  Prussia  withdrew  her 
delegates,  after  a  vote  had  been  passed  that  her  interfer¬ 
ence  in  Saxony  had  been  an  unwarrantable  breach  of  the 
peace.  The  conduct  of  affairs  came  more  and  more  into 
the  hands  of  the  radicals.  The  feeling  gained  ground, 
among  the  more  moderate  elements,  that  they  had  no 
longer  any  positive  policy  to  defend.  On  the  20th  of 
May,  1849,  sixty-five  members,  including  in  their  number 
almost  all  whose  names  had  given  brilliancy  to  the  as¬ 
sembly,  seceded  in  a  body  —  declaring  their  unwillingness 
to  sunder  the  last  legal  ties  between  the  governments  and 
peoples  of  Germany,  and  to  foster  civil  war.  Among  them, 
was  old  Ernst  Moritz  Arndt,  who  for  nearly  half  a  century, 
had  sung  of  a  united  Germany  which  he  was  never  to  see. 

Bereft  of  its  sanest  members,  the  parliament  ran  riot  with 
its  revolutionary  ideas.  The  number  necessary  for  a  quo¬ 
rum  was  reduced  from  one  hundred  and  fifty  to  a  hundred. 
The  place  of  meeting  was  moved  from  Frankfort  to  Stutt¬ 
gart,  for  no  other  apparent  purpose  than  to  be  nearer  to 
the  disaffected  district.  The  “  centre  ”  party  had  already 
left  because  of  the  refusal  to  declare  roundly,  that  the  only 
object  now  aimed  at  was  the  furtherance  of  the  constitu¬ 
tion,  and  that  all  interference  on  the  part  of  foreign  coun¬ 
tries  was  to  be  deprecated.  It  had  come  to  be  called  the 
rump  Parliament, — this  survival  of  a  once  important  body. 
It  now  elected  a  “  regency  for  the  empire  ” ;  and  this  “  re¬ 
gency  ”  proclaimed  to  the  German  people  that,  in  the 
struggle  against  absolutism,  they  were  to  accept  no  com¬ 
mands  save  from  itself  and  its  plenipotentiaries.  It  called 
for  a  general  arming,  and  for  a  credit  of  five  million  thalers. 

But  the  u  rump  ”  had  overestimated  its  strength.  It 
was  fain  to  obey  the  commands  of  the  Wurtemberg  gov¬ 
ernment,  which  first  ordered  it  to  vacate  the  assembly  hall 


* 


STRUGGLE  FOR  CONSTITUTIONAL  GOVERNMENT  369 

s 

of  the  estates  ;  then  to  hold  the  sessions  of  the  u  regency  ” 
beyond  the  state  boundaries  ;  and,  finally,  to  move  away 
altogether  under  pain  of  “suitable  measures.”  It  was  given 
its  quietus  by  being'  forced  to  disperse  by  soldiers  with 
diawn  swords.  Thirteen  months  had  the  Parliament  as  a 
whole  been  in  session,  and  its  immediate  results  were  abso¬ 
lutely  nil ;  though  it  is  safe  to  say  that  its  deliberations, 
and  even  its  mistakes,  made  it  easier  for  the  next  genera¬ 
tion  to  realize  the  dream  of  national  unity. 


TOL.  II  —  2B 


l 


CHAPTER  IX 


THE  RECKONING  WITH  AUSTRIA 


The 

Prussian 

Union. 


Literature  :  In  addition  to  the  general  treatments  by  Bulle,  Bieder- 
mann,  Pierson,  and  Fyffe,  see  the  monumental  work  of  Sybel,  Grundung 
des  deutsclien  Seiches,  and,  almost  more  importantstilkEriedjung,  Kampf 
um  die  Vorherrschaft  in  Deutschland.  MarckfW^^^^r  Wilhelm  is  a 
biography  of  the  highest  order.  Bismarck’s  recfl^Pplished  memoirs 
should  be  read  as  a  whole  ;  they  are  made  use  of  in  a  convenient  compila¬ 


tion  by  Liman,  Bismarck'' s  Denkwurdigkeiten.  The  most  comprehensive 


biography  of  Bismarck  is  that  by  Hans  Blum,  with  no  charm  of  style. 


When,  at  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the 
Emperor  Leopold  would  scarcely  consent  to  the  raising  of 
Prussia  among  the  monarchies,  it  was  because  he  feared 
the  rivalry  of  this  new,  wholly  German  state.  That  fear 
was  now  to  be  realized,  and  the  result  was  to  be  a  deadly 
war  for  supremacy.  Austria’s  old  prestige  had  carried  her 
safely  through  the  trying  time  of  the  Congress  of  Vienna ; 
while  Metternich’s  ability  had  caused  her  still  to  retain  the 
leadership  for  more  than  a  generation.  But  the  revolution 
of  1848  had  been  the  beginning  of  the  end.  The  Parliament 
of  Frankfort,  representing  the  people  of  all  Germany,  had 
had  no  room  in  its  new  political  creation  for  the  Croats, 
Poles,  Magyars,  Czechs,  and  other  strange  nationalities 
that  went  to  make  up  five-sixths  of  Austria’s  population. 

After  the  rupture  with  the  Frankfort  Diet,  Prussia  took 
upon  her  own  shoulders  the  task  of  uniting  Germany,  and, 
on  May  17,  1849,  a  conference  to  which  all  the  German 
powers  had  been  invited  was  opened  in  Berlin.  But  only 
Austria,  Bavaria,  Hanover,  and  Saxony  responded  to  the 


370 


I 


THE  RECKONING  WITH  AUSTRIA  371 

call,  and  the  envoys  of  the  two  former  powers  withdrew 
almost  at  once;  while  Saxony  and  Hanover  joined  in  the 
so-called  League  of  the  Three  Kingdoms,  merely  to  gain 
time  until  Austria  should  have  put  down  revolts  in  Hun¬ 
gary  and  in  northern  Italy.  On  the  other  hand,  the  idea 
of  this  union  appealed  to  the  former  Prussian  imperial 
party  of  the  Frankfort  Diet.  One  hundred  and  fifty  of  the 
ex-members  met  at  Gotha  and  voted  to  seize  this  new  op¬ 
portunity  of  healing  the  wrounds  of  the  fatherland.  They 
urged  their  respective  governments  to  join  the  cause,  and 
soon  twenty-euAifcpf  the  small  states  had  handed  in  their 
allegiance,  ■  Bavaria,  and  Wiirtemberg  being  the 

only  important  powers  to  remain  aloof.  It  was  determined 
to  adopt  the  Frankfort  constitution,  but  to  change  the 
mode  of  elections  to  the  three-class  system.  A  Union  Par¬ 
liament  was  called  to  meet  at  Erfurt  and  came  together  in 
March,  1850  ;  by  which  time,  indeed,  Saxony  and  Hanover 
had  shown  their  true  colors.  To  the  last  these  governments 
had  duped  their  own  people  with  an  apparent  interest  in 
German  unity. 

The  Prussian  programme  had  been  to  form  a  greater  and  The  plan  of 
a  lesser  union.  Into  the  former  Austria  was  to  be  received,  restoring 
the  closest  of  alliances  formed  with  her,  her  territory  pro- 
tected,  agreements  formed  for  the  furtherance  of  trade  and 
intercourse.  With  the  latter,  consisting  of  purely  German 
elements,  she  was  to  have  nothing  whatever  to  do.  But 
this  did  not  suit  the  views  of  the  Vienna  court ;  and,  as  a 
counter  move,  its  ministers  summoned  an  assembly  to 
Frankfort  to  debate  on  the  question  of  reviving  the  old 
Diet.  The  princes  belonging  to  the  Union  were  willing  to 
send  delegates,  provided  the  matter  could  be  discussed  in 
free  conferences  ;  but  denied  that  the  convention  itself 
in  any  way  represented  the  old  Diet. 

Had  Frederick  William  IV.  been  possessed  of  a  firmer 

\i  I 


i 


372 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The 

amended 
constitution 
of  Prussia. 


The  affair 
of  Hesse. 


character,  some  good  result  might  have  come  of  the  Prus< 
sian  Union.  But  his  heart  was  only  half  in  the  work. 
With  his  own  local  Parliament  he  had  been  engaged  in 
revising  the  recently  granted  Prussian  constitution,  and 
his  success  in  that  direction  had  turned  his  head.  Every¬ 
where  he  had  caused  offensive  clauses  to  be  modified:  in¬ 
troducing  the  three-class  system  of  voting,  retaining  for 
himself  the  right  to  pass  decrees  —  if  not  contrary  to  the 
constitution  —  in  the  absence  of  the  chambers,  freeing 
the  army  from  the  obligation  of  swearing  to  the  consti¬ 
tution,  and  restricting  the  Parliament’s  right  of  abolishing 
taxes.  The  upper  house  was  to  consist  of  hereditary  and 
of  life  members,  not  of  those  elected  by  the  people  ;  and  a 
special  court  was  to  be  established  for  political  offences. 
No  wonder  the  liberals  were  furious  ;  no  wonder  they 
called  this  Parliament  a  law-taking,  not  a  law-giving 
assembly.  The  constitution,  in  its  amended  foim,  was 
finally  promulgated  on  January  31,  1850  ;  and  the  king, 
when  taking  oath  to  it,  declared  that  it  had  come  into 
being  in  a  year  which  the  loyalty  of  generations  to  come 
would  wish  with  tears  to  see  obliterated  from  Prussian 
history,  and  which  still  bore  the  broad  stamp  of  its  origin. 
But,  under  its  amended  form,  it  would  at  least  be  possible 
for  him  to  continue  to  rule,  though  his  people  must  beware 
and  not  use  it  as  a  cloak  for  their  wickedness,  or  a  sub¬ 
stitute  for  divine  Providence.  This  achievement  reacted 
forcibly  on  the  Erfurt  Union  Parliament ;  and  the  Prussian 
ministers  took  the  extraordinary  step  of  demanding  reac¬ 
tionary  alterations  in  the  very  draft  of  a  federal  consti¬ 
tution  which  they  themselves  had  shortly  before  presented, 
—  a  step  which  lost  them  the  sympathy  of  all  the  national 

liberal  elements  in  Germany. 

Austria  was  growing  more  and  more  insistent  that  the  old 
Diet  should  be  restored,  and  that  the  whole  Austrian-Hun- 


THE  RECKONING  WITH  AUSTRIA 


373 


garian  monarchy  should  be  allowed  to  enter  the  Confedera¬ 
tion.  She  proposed  to  alter  the  method  of  representation  so 
that  all  the  minor  states  together,  which  were  Prussia’s 
fiimest  allies,  should  have  but  one  vote.  u  It  is  necessary 
to  avilir,  or  abase,  Prussia,”  was  a  reported  saying  of  the 
Austrian  minister,  S cb wR V2^11  hm-q- 

And  abase  Prussia  Austria  did,  so  completely,  that  the 
journey  of  Frederick  William’s  prime  minister  to  Olmiitz, 
the  temporary  residence  of  the  emperor,  has  often  been 
compared  with  the  famous  pilgrimage  of  Henry  IV.  to  the 
feet  of  Gregory  VII.  at  Canossa. 

The  immediate  occasion  was^a  common  claim  to  the 
right  of  interfering  in  the  affairs  of  a  minor  state.  In 
the  electorate  of  JUes.se,  which  belonged  to  the  Prussian 
Union,  a  fierce  struggle  was  waging  between  a  reactionary 
minister,  Hassenpflug,  and  a  Parliament  that  refused  him 
taxes.  Hassenpflug  —  whose  enemies  called  him  Hessen- 
Fluch — appealed  to  the  Diet  of  Frankfort,  which  was 
finally  declared  reestablished  in  September,  1850.  Prussia 


prepared  to  maintain  the  rights  of  the  Union.  Austria 


held  a  meeting  with  the  kings  of  Wiirtemberg  and  Ba¬ 
varia,  during  which  the  former  declared  at  a  banquet  that 
a  soldier  must  follow  his  emperor,  wherever  he  might 
lead.  It  was  determined  to  raise  an  army  of  two  hun¬ 
dred  thousand  men.  Austrian  and  Prussian  forces 
entered  Hesse.  Frederick  William  in  vain  sought  the 
j\  mediation  of  the  Czar,  while  Schwarzenberg  came  out 
roundly  with  demands,  in  the  form  of  an  ultimatum, 
to  the  effect  that  the  Prussian  JLJnion  should  hp. 
solved,  that  the  federal  Diet  should  be  recngniy.pr^  tfipf, 
Hesse  be  evacuated,  and  that  the  Austrians  be  not  inter¬ 
fered  with  in  Schleswig  JUolstein,  —  where  Prussia  had 
been  pursuing  a  policy  weak  in  itself  and  unpopular  with 
the  rest  of  Germany.  Austria  desired  that  this  matter, 


374 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  jour¬ 
ney  to 
Olmiitz. 


Bismarck 
in  the 
Union  Par 
liament  at 
Erfurt. 


as  well  as  the  Hessian  dispute,  should  be  handed  over  to 
the  federal  -Di&L, 

There  were  not  wanting  indignant  men,  like  Urown 
Prince  William,  like  Bunsen,  like  Pourtales,  —  who  were 
ready  for  anything  rather  than  lick  the  dust  from  the 
feet  of  a  boastful  enemy.  But  this  was  practically  the 
course  advocated  by  the  band  of  intriguers  who  just  then 
held  the  king’s  ear.  Radowitz,  in  favor  of  resistance, 
resigned.  Manteuffel,  with  no  other  thought  than  sub¬ 
mission,  took  his  place.  He  made,  indeed,  an  outward 
show  of  mobilizing,  but  told  the  Austrian  ambassador  it 
was  merely  to  calm  the  rabble,  and  ordered  the  troops  to 
avoid  real  hostilities.  This  they  did  with  such  good  effect 
that  the  only  casualty  in  the  one  skirmish  at  Bronzell  was 
the  death  of  a  white  horse.  At  Ojuui^Jinally,  Man¬ 
teuffel  laid  Prussia  prostrate  at  Austria’s  feet,  as  few 
unconquered  states  have  ever  been  humiliated.  The  Union 
was  abandoned,  the  Diet  acknowledged,  the  troops,  save 
one  battalion,  ordered  from  Hesse.  Austria  might  even 
have  entered  the  Confederation  and  formed  her  longed- 
for  “  seventy  million  ”  empire,  had  not  England  peremp¬ 
torily  interfered  on  the  ground  that  the  balance  of  power 
in  Europe  would  be  destroyed.  The  SchlessdgJIokteiners 
were  ordered  to  submit  to  DentngjJjjjind  Prussian  officials 
aided  the  Austrians  in  forcing  these  former  allies  to  lay 
down  their  arms. 

There  were  those  who  'considered  that  Olmiitz  was  un¬ 
avoidable,  that  in  her  then  condition  Prussia  could  not  pos¬ 
sibly  have  taken  up  the  struggle  against  Austria  and  her 
allies:  among  them  was  Otto  von  Bi^marctBfilsfiiihailsen, 
the  future  imperial  chancellor,  at  that  time  a  strong  con¬ 
servative.  His  long  term  of  devoted  service  to  the  royal 
house  of  Prussia  had  begun  in  1847,  as  a  member  of  the 
Prussian  Landtag.  When,  in  the  following  March,  he 

“A  :  41X1 


THE  RECKONING  WITH  AUSTRIA 


375 


( 


first  heard  of  the  bitter  humiliations  to  which  Frederick 
William  was  subjected  by  the  revolutionists,  of  the  ex¬ 
traordinary  scenes  in  the  courtyard  of  the  palace  at 
Berlin,  of  the  flight  of  the  heir  apparent  to  England,  he 
had  written  to  the  king  to  offer  his  sympathy ;  and,  shortly 
after,  had  presented  himself  in  person.  He  was  at  this 
time  thjrty^ireejrears  of  age,  had  seen  many  sides  of  life, 
had  administered  his  father’s  estate  of  Kneiphof  with 
considerable  success,  and  had  served  as  a  local  magistrate. 
He  was  strongly  against  liberal  concessions  and  considered 
that  in  making  them  the  crown  “  had  thrown  earth  upon 
its  own  coffin.”  Yet  he  soon  reconciled  himself  to  the 
irrevocable,  though  seeking  to  save  what  could  still  be 
saved  of  the  royal  prerogative.  In  numerous  assemblies 
which  he  instigated  he  goaded  on  the  nobles  and  the 
country  gentry.  He  opposed  the  acceptance  of  the 
Irankfort  offer  of  the  imperial  crown,  mainly  because 
the  new  emperor  would  have  no  veto  power, — an  objection 
which  he  later  let  fall  when  it  came  to  framing  the  present 
constitution.  As  a  member  of  the  Erfurt  Parliament,  he 
often  caused  the  liberals  to  writhe  under  his  utterances. 
His  every  action  was  bold  and  decided  :  when  he  first 
entered  the  assembly  he  is  reported  to  have  torn  from 
the  chairs  of  the  Prussian  conservatives  the  black,  red, 
and  gold  ribbons,  and  to  have  replaced  them  with  black 
and  white.  But  he  could  not  save  the  dignity  of  the 
Prussian  crown  when  the  man  who  wore  it  was  a  Frederick 
William  IV. 

After  Olmutz*  Bismatck  was  sent  to  represent  Prussia 
in  the  restored  Diet  of  Frankfort, — first  as  a  subordinate  of 
Herr* von  Rochow.  but  soon  as  minister  plenipotentiary  in 
his  own  person.  There  were  many  who  thought  him  too 
inexperienced  for  the  position  ;  but  those  who  knew  him 
best  argued  strongly  in  his  favor,  knowing  his  coolness, 


Bismarck 
as  envoy  to 
the  restored 
Diet  of 
Frankfort. 


376 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


his  cleverness,  and  his  courage.  The  Frankfort  news- 
papers  spread  abroad  the  squib  that,  if  asked  to  command 
a  frigate  or  to  perform  an  operation  in  surgery,  he  would 
doubtless  declare  that  he  had  never  done  it,  but  that  he 
would  gladly  try. 

Bismarck’s  first  journey  to  Frankfort,  as  a  member  of 
the  Diet,  has  been  likened  to  that  pilgrimage  of  Martin 
Luther  to  Rome  which  opened  the  eyes  of  the  reformer  to 
the  evils  rampant  in  the  church.  Hitherto  he  had  been 
more  or  less  Austria’s  friend.  Now  he  found  that  her 
settled  policy  was  never  to  recognize  Prussia  as  her  equal. 
The  Austrian  envoy,  Count  Thun,  who  presided  over  the 
sessions  of  the  Diet,  treated  the  other  states  as  subordi¬ 
nate  powers.  His  manners  were  lordly,  his  actions  arbi¬ 
trary.  In  drawing  up  the  protocols,  he  inserted  or 
omitted  what  pleased  himself.  He  required  a  unanimous 
or  a  majority  vote,  according  as  Austrian  interests  de¬ 
manded  ;  and,  in  the  same  way,  hurried  through  or  post¬ 
poned  meetings.  It  may  seem  a  small  matter,  that  at 
formal  committee  meetings  he  would  be  the  only  one  to 
wear  negligee  costume  and  to  indulge  in  a  cigar ;  but  it 
marked  a  tacitly  acknowledged  superiority  that  galled 
and  irritated  Bismarck.  The  latter  has  related  how,  on 
one  such  occasion,  he  himself  astonished  the  count  and  the 
assembly  by  coolly  walking  up  and  demanding  a  light. 
So  seriously  was  the  matter  taken  that  the  envoys  of  the 
/smaller  states  wrote  home  to  know  if  they  might  allow 
^themselves  the  same  privilege  ;  and,  as  the  answers  came 
in,  one  cigar  after  another  was  ostentatiously  lighted.  It 
was  hard  on  the  Wlirtemberg  envoy,  who  disliked  to¬ 
bacco  ;  but  for  the  honor  of  his  state  he  was  compelled  to 

'  smoke. 

Bismarck’s  impressions  as  to  a  deep  hostility  to  Prussia 
found  confirmation  in  a  curious  way.  Prokesch,  who  was 


THE  RECKONING  WITH  AUSTRIA 


377 


Austrian  envoy  in  1854,  sold  an  old  desk  in  Frankfort  Bismarck 
which  eventually  found  its  way  to  Berlin ;  in  one  of  the  upholds 
drawers  he  had  accidentally  left  a  complete  correspond-  Prussia’s 
ence,  drafts  of  his  own  letters  and  originals  of  the  Frankfort 
answers,  —  in  which  members  of  the  press  were  urged  to 
foster  an  anti-Prussian  sentiment  in  Germany.  When 
this  damning  evidence  was  placed  in  his  possession,  Bis¬ 
marck  could  readily  have  obtained  the  recall  of  Prokp.so.h  • 
but  he  refrained  from  doing  so  on  the  ground  that  he  pre¬ 
ferred  an  incautious  to  a  cautious  adversary.  For  their 
own  parts,  the  Austrians  hated  the  wary  Prussian  minis¬ 
ter  with  a  deadly  hatred,  and  did  not  spare  him  actual  in- 
i  suits.  An  archduke  asked  him  sneeringly  at  a  ball  if 
certain  medals,  which  were  in  reality  tokens  of  valuable 
diplomatic  services,  had  been  won  before  the  enemy. 

I'  “All  won  before  the  enemy,  all  won  right  here  in  Frank¬ 
fort,”  was  the  ready  answer.  The  eight  years  spent  at 
the  Diet  were  mainly  devoted  to  raising  the  sunken  pres¬ 
tige  of  Prussia,  to  seeing  that  no  slight  should  go  una¬ 
venged  that  was  the  first  step  in  the  task  of  transferring 
the  balance  of  power  from  Austria  to  his  own  state,  and 
placing  the  latter  at  the  head  of  Germany.  By  holding 
his  own  he  paved  the  way  for  the  final  reckoning. 

At  the  time  of  the  Crimean  War,  Bismarck’s  advice  Prussia 
maintained  Frederick  William  in  the  path  of  neutrality,  —  and  the 
even  though  the  king’s  dearest  friend,  Bunsen,  urged  him  (  rimean 
to  join  with  England  and  France  ;  and  though  his  brother, 
the  Crown  Prince  William,  was  very  zealous  for  war. 

Bismarck  pointed  out,  that  Prussia  had  everything  to  lose 

I  and  nothing  to  gain,  that  there  was  no  cosily  belli \  with 
Russia,  that  it  was  the  height  of  political  folly  to  provoke 
this  “ perpetual  neighbor.”  In  an  interview  with  the 
Crown  Prince,  who  strongly  opposed  him  on  this  point, 
he  protested  against  playing  the  role  of  an  Indian  vassal 


Prussia 
and  the 
Franco- 
Austrian 
War. 


378  a  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

prince,  and  fighting  England’s  wars  under  England  s 
patronage.  This  policy  toward  Russia,— which  prevailed 
in  the  end,  and  which  was  to  be  repeated  at  a  later  date, 
stood  Prussia,  at  the  last,  in  good  stead.  Bismarck  was 
the  first  of  her  statesmen  to  look  far  ahead  on  the  polit¬ 
ical  horizon  and  reckon  with  every  possible  disadvan- 
tageous  element. 

For  a  time,  during  the  early  stages  of  the  Crimean  War, 
Austria  and  Prussia  had  gone  hand  in  hand.  They  had 
joined  with  the  Western  powers  in  presenting  the  famous 
four  demands  :\abolition  of  the  Russian  protectorate  over 
the  Danube  principalities,  and  of  the  Russian  preponderance 
in  theJ^Black  Sea;Vffee  passage  of  the  Danube,  Rhd  a  gen¬ 
eral,  not  a  particular,  protectorate  over  the  Christian  sub¬ 
jects  of  the  Porte.  But,  when  these  demands  had  been 
accepted  by  Russia  as  a  basis  for  negotiation,  and  Austria 
joined  with  England  and  France  in  asking  for  still  more,, 
then  their  ways  parted.  Prussia  had  nothing  to  do  with 
the  war  and  barely  secured  representation  in  the  peace 
congress  at  Paris.  Only  on  the  ground  that  she  had  signed 
a  former  maritime  treaty  that  had  now  to  be  abrogated  was 
she  finally  admitted. 

When,  in  1859,  Austria’s  war  with  France  and  Sardinia 
broke  out,  the  first-named  power  assumed,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  that  Prussia  would  stand  by  her,  notwithstanding 
the  fact  that  purely  dynastic  interests  were  at  stake.  Even 
in  other  parts  of  Germany,  there  was  a  great  outcry  that 
the  Rhine  must  be  defended  on  the  P o ;  that  in  case  of  Aus¬ 
tria’s  defeat  this  new  Napoleon  would  turn  upon  Prussia, 
as  his  namesake  had  done  in  the  days  of  Jena.  But  Prus¬ 
sia  could  not  accept  the  conditions  which  Austria  imposed. 
She  was  willing  to  aid  her  if  treated  as  a  great  power,  but 
not  to  subordinate  the  direction  of  her  armies  to  commis¬ 
sioners  from  the  federal  Diet.  Rather  than  yield  the 


THE  BECKONING  WITH  AUSTBIA 


379 


point,  Austria  preferred  to  lose  the  main  part  of  her  prov¬ 
inces  in  Italy.  When  signing  the  Peace  of  Villafranca  the 
Emperor  Francis  Joseph  declared,  in  a  manifesto  to  the 
powers,  that  he  did  so  because  he  had  been  deserted  by  his 
nearest  and  natural  ally ;  and  it  was  long  before  the  wound 
ceased  to  rankle. 

Frederick  William  IV.,  at  this  time,  was  passing  into  the 
entrance  of  the  valley  of  the  shadow  of  death.  Early  in 
1857  his  intellect  gave  signs  of  clouding,  wild  excitability 
alternating  with  mute  despair.  His  brother  William  was 
named  his  viceger£&fc ;  and,  after  nine  painful  months  of 
subserviency  to  the  old  policy  and  to  the  old  advisers,  was 
formally  declared  regent.  Already  sixty  years  of  age,  the 
prince,  —  whose  one  opportunity  of  distinguishing  himself 
had  been  the  insurrection  in  Baden,  — had  come  to  consider 
his  career  at  an  end.  When  answering  the  congratulations 
of  the  future  Field-marshal  Roon,  on  the  occasion  of  his 
birthday,  he  declared  that  he  had  reached  the  age  when 
men  continued  to  live  only  in  their  children.  He  spoke  of 
himself  as  an  old  man,  little  dreaming  that  he  was  merely 
on  the  threshold  of  a  new  era  which  was  to  bear  his  own 
name.  Thirty  years  later  the  writer  saw  him  strong  and 
erect,  the  idol  of  enthusiastic  crowds. 

Yet  in  these  earlier  years  popularity  was  the  last  trib¬ 
ute  that  was  paid  to  this  king.  Frederick  William  died 
in  1861,  and  by  that  time  there  was  culminating  a 
struggle,  in  which  William’s  opinions  were  so  diametri¬ 
cally  opposed  to  those  of  the  majority  of  his  srbjects,  so 
severe  were  the  measures  to  which  he  lent  his  support, 
that,  when  he  drove  through  the  streets  of  Berlin,  men 
passed  him  in  stubborn  silence,  without  raising  their 
hats ;  and  once,  when  a  member  of  his  family  died,  the 
most  ordinary  condolences  were  omitted. 

The  levies  which  Prussia  had  made,  against  the  possi- 


Prince 
William 
as  regent 
of  Prussia. 


King 

William’s 
proposed 
army  re¬ 
form. 


380 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Opposition 
to  the  pro¬ 
posed  army 
reform. 


bility  of  becoming  involved  in  the  Italian  war,  had  shown 
forth  all  the  weakness  of  her  military  system,  which, 
based  on  laws  and  regulations  passed  in  1814,  when  the 
population  was  very  much  smaller,  no  longer  corresponded 
to  the  needs  of  the  time.  While,  in  theory,  every  sound 
man  in  the  kingdom  was  bound  to  do  military  service,  in 
practice  there  was  only  room  in  the  existing  regiments  for 
two-thirds  of  the  recruits.  In  time  of  war,  in  order  to 
increase  the  army  to  the  proper  size,  it  would  have  been 
necessary  to  call  out  the  Landwe-hr ,  which  consisted  largely 
of  men  burdened  with  the  care  of  families;  while  some 
twenty-five  thousand  younger  men  remained  idle.  The 
essence  of  the  reform  that  William  proposed  was  to  spare 
the  Landwehr  and  to  throw  the  burden  of  service  on  the 
regiments  of  the  line,  the  numbers  and  efficiency  of  which 
he  intended  to  increase. 

It  is  not  apparent,  at  first,  why  these  propositions  should 
have  evoked  such  stubborn  and  unrelenting  opposition  on 
the  part  of  the  Prussian  Parliament.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  as 
in  most  conflicts  on  special  points,  there  were  deeper 
principles  involved  than  appeared  on  the  surface.  Prussia 
had  become  a  constitutional  monarchy ;  did  this  mean 
that,  as  in  England  or  in  Belgium,  the  sovereign  had 
practically  renounced  all  political  power  ?  It  was  the 
service  of  William  I.  to  his  country  to  answer  this  ques¬ 
tion  in  the  negative.  He  admitted  the  legislative  func¬ 
tions  of  the  Parliament,  he  reserved  the  executive  for 
himself ;  and  he  was  ready  to  resign  the  office  rather  than 
not  wield  it  as  his  fathers  had  done. 

The  change  in  the  army  presupposed  an  expense  of  only 
about  nine  million-  thalers.  The  country  was  prosperous, 
and  the  additional  taxation  was  not  likely  to  be  felt. 
But  the  party  of  opposition,  which  possessed  a  clear 
majority  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  was  determined 


THE  RECKONING  WITH  AUSTRIA 


381 


I 


to  make  its  grant  contingent  on  various  concessions, — 
among  them  the  shortening  of  the  term  of  service  from 
three  to  two  years.  \They  attacked  the  policy  of  the 
feeble  Hohenzollern  ministry,  and  asked,  why  should  they 
place  forty-nine  new  regiments  at  the  service  of  a  govern¬ 
ment  too  weak  to  use  them?  5l it  was  whispered  that  the 
chief  object  was  to  supply  young  nobles  with  positions  as 
officers,  and  the  whole  movement  was  cried  down  as  a 
reflection  on  the  Landwjzlir^ which  had  done  such  glorious 
service  in  1813. 

There  is  no  doubt  in  the  minds  of  men  to-day  but  that  The  refusal 
there  were  serious  errors  on  both  sides.  The  government  of  the  army 
obtained  its  grant  for  the  first  year  under  something  like  grant‘ 
false  pretences,  —  the  fipance  minister,  Patow,  explaining 
that  the  definite  settlement  of  the  army  question  would 
not  be  prejudiced  by  the  provisional  granting  of  the  sum 
required,  and  hinting  that  the  desired  concessions  might^ 
later  be  made.  At  all  events,  the  regiments  were  formed, 
the  officers  appointed,  the  men  enrolled,  and  the  flags  com, 
secrated. 

The  weakness  of  the  position  of  the  liberal  party  rests  on 
the  fact,  that  it  had  authorized  acts  which  could  not  well  be 
undone,  however  much  it  might  regard  them  as  provisional. 

Indeed,  in  the  following  year,  1861,  the  parliament 
repeated  its  grant  of  nine  millions,  though  placing  it  in 
the  budget  among  the  “  once-recurring  and  temporary  ex¬ 
penses.”  The  trouble  began  in  September,  1862  ;  the  elec¬ 
tions  to  the  new  Diet  had  fallen  out  most  disadvantageously 
for  the  government,  there  had  been  a  ministerial  crisis  and 
a  dissolution  of  the  Parliament.  In  spite  of  pressure,  fair 
and  unfair,  the  opposition  in  the  new  house  was  stronger 
than  ever.  The  majority  had  determined  to  take  the  last 
and  decisive  step.  In  the  most  abrupt  and  insulting  man¬ 
ner  every  penny  was  refused  for  the  support  of  the  new 


382 


The  inter¬ 
view  at 
Babelsberg. 


JvA'-' 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

s 


regiments,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  money  was  due 
for  the  payment  of  officers’  salaries.  No  greater  blow  had 
ever  been  struck  at  the  prestige  of  the  Prussian  king. 
/These  were  men  whom  he  himself  had  appointed,  who 
wore  his  uniform  and  carried  his  ensigns.  They  were  dis¬ 
missed  against  his  will  and  without  pay.  In  the  most 
(/conservative  state  of  civilized  Europe,  forty-five  regiments 
were  told  to  strike  their  colors  at  the  voice  of  the  democ¬ 
racy. 

It  was  at  this  juncture  that  1  Bismarck]  first  entered  the 
stage  as  a  leading  character,  not  to  leave  it  until,  a  genera¬ 
tion  later,  a  new,  young  impresario  saw  fit  to  dispense  with 
his  services.  He  was  well  known  to  William,  who  had 
often  had  interviews  with  him  in  Frankfort;  but  passed  for 
too  violent,  too  reactionarv.  The  idea  had  often  been 
broached  of  making  him  prime  miui&tex,  but  he  had  been 
appointed  instead  as  ambassador  to  St.  Petersburg  —  sent 
to  cool  on  the  banks  of  the  Neva,  as  he  himself  expressed 
it,  like  champagne  for  future  use.  His  name  had  always 
stood  for  a  strong  progressive  policy;  and  to  him  William 
turned,  at  a  moment  when  his  people,  and  even  his  own 
wife  and  son,  were  against  him,  and  when  the  very 
foundations  of  his  throne  were  tottering. 


Bismarck  was  summoned  to  Baljclsberg.  and  held  a  pri¬ 
vate  interview  with  the  king  in  the  park  of  the  castle. 
He  found  William  dejected  and  discouraged :  between  his 
desire  not  to  break  the  constitution  and  his  conviction  of 
the  need  of  a  strong  army,  there  seemed  nothing  left  but 
abdication ;  and  he  had  the  document  before  him,  already 
drawn  up  and  signed.  “  To  that  let  it  never  come,”  urged 
Bismarck ;  and  then  and  there  he  undertook  the  task  of 
ministerial  government  without  a  majority  hout  a  bud¬ 
get,  and  without  a  programme  —  at  the  sa  me  giving  a 

promise  that  he  would  never  renounce  ,rmy  reform. 


THE  RECKONING  WITH  AUSTRIA 


383 


The  main  question,  he  declared,  the  one  on  which  all  oth¬ 
ers  hinged,  was  whether  in  Prussia  the  crown  should  gov¬ 
ern,  or  a  majority  of  the  House  of  Representatives.  And, 
indeed,  looking  back,  it  is  impossible  to  overrate  the  im¬ 
portance  of  the  four  years’  struggle  that  now  began.  Had 
Bismarck  been  driven  by  the  overwhelming  majorities 
against  him  to  resign,  had  the  king  abdicated,  had  that 
army  which  at  the  crucial  moment  proved  strong  enough 
to  defy  the  rest  of  Germany  been  reduced  to  its  earlier 
level :  it  is  hard  to  see  how  German  unity  could  ever  have 
been  established. 

It  was  an  up-hill  fight  that  had  to  be  fought  by  the  new 
president  of  the  ministry.  His  first  step  was  to  withdraw  al¬ 
together  the  budget  the  House  had  failed  to  approve,  and  to 
carry  on  the  business  of  governing  —  paying  the  regiments 
as  well  —  without  giving  an  account  of  his  expenditures. 
He  found  a  technical  excuse  in  the  wording  of  the  consti¬ 
tution  which  declared,  that  “  the  amount  of  the  budget  shall 
be  fixed  yearly  by  a  law :  ”  but  which  also  provided,  that  “to 
pass  any  law  the  consent  of  the  king  and  of  _both-JIouses 
of  Parliament  is  needed.”  That  there  was  real  danger  in 
the  game  they  were  playing  both  Bismarck  and  Williaafi 
were  aware :  the  latter  once  looked  out  upon  the  square 
before  his  palace,  and  expressed  his  dread  lest  the  minis¬ 
ter’s  head  might  fall,  and  his  own  after  it.  Bismarck 
replied  with  words  to  the  effect,  that  there  were  worse 
deaths  than  those  that  had  been  inflicted  on  Strafford  and 
Charles  I. 

At  all  events  the  game  was  played  with  the  greatest 
boldness.  The  press  was  gagged!  unfriendly  government 
officials  deprived  of  their  places^political  discussions  for- 
bidden^at  public  meetings,  and  even  freedom  of  speecliVn 
the  House  itself  interfered  with  by  the  police.  The  climax 
was  reached,  when  the  bayonets  of  the  king’s  soldiers  were 


Drastic 
measures  of 
the  govern¬ 
ment. 


384 


A  SHOUT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


literally  turned  against  the  breasts  of  members  of  Parlia¬ 
ment,  who  had  accepted  an  invitation  to  the  city  of  Cologne 


Alterca¬ 
tions  in  the 
House  of 
Repre¬ 
sentatives. 


to  a  festival  on  the  Rhine. 

In  the  House,  in  spite  of  the  harshest  criticism,  in  spite 
of  the  remark  of  the  presiding  member,  that  “  the  country 
was  tired  of  having  a  mountebank  at  its  head,  Bismarck 
held  his  ground  unmoved.  He  thundered,  he  bullied,  he 
threatened  ;  he  let  loose  the  immensely  powerful  weapon  of 
his  wit.  One  day,  in  committee  meeting,  he  drew  forth  a 
little  twig  from  his  pocket,  and  exclaimed  to  a  progression¬ 
ist  member:  “This  olive  branch  I  plucked  in  Avignon,  to 
offer  to  the  people’s  party  as  a  token  of  peace :  I  see  that 
the  time  has  not  yet  come.”  “Prussia’s  kingship,”  he 
once  exclaimed,  “has  not  yet  fulfilled  its  mission.  It  is 
not  yet  ripe  enough  to  form  a  purely  ornamental  trimming 
of  your  constitutional  structure,  not  yet  ready  to  be  inserted 
as  a  dead  piece  of  machinery  in  the  mechanism  of  parlia¬ 
mentary  rule.”  And  again,  “  Germany  does  not  look  to 
Prussia’s  liberalism,  but  to  her  power.  .  .  .  The  great  ques¬ 


tions  of  the  day  are  not  decided  by  speeches  and  majority 
votes,  —  therein  lay  the  weakness  of  1848  and  1849,  —  but 
MhyJi]oQd,  and  iron  ?\’  When  Virchow  accused  him  of 
“  downright  dishonesty,”  he  rose  to  ask  if  political  differ¬ 
ences  were  to  be  settled  after  the  manner  of  the  Horatii 
and  Curiatii,  and  sent  a  challenge  to  a  duel.  There 
were  times  when  the  personalities  grew  fairly  Homeric. 
When  the  king  was  asked  to  restrain  his  ministers,  he 
replied  that  he  shared  their  views.  A  convention  signed 
with  Russia  for  putting  down  the  Polish  insurrection  added 
fuel  to  the  flames.  The  sending  of  soldiers  to  the  boundary 
was  likened  to  the  selling  of  Hessians  to  England.  Repre¬ 
sentative  Twesten  declared,  “The  honor  of  the  present 
government  is  no  longer  the  honor  of  the  state  and  of  the 


land !  ” 


/ 


THE  RECKONING  WITH  AUSTRIA 


385 


: 


To  add  to  his  other  difficulties,  Bismarck  was  obliged  to 
contend  with  adverse  influences  at  court.  The  sympathies 
of  the  queen  and  of  the  crown  prince  were  openly  on  the 
side  of  the  House:  “Two  weeks  of  Baden-Baden  and  of 
Augusta,”  writes  Bismarck  in  one  of  his  letters,  “had 
almost  shaken  the  courage  of  the  king.”  Bismarck 
was  greatly  hated  at  the  court  of  London.  Queen 
Victoria  felt  that  her  daughter’s  interests  demanded  her 
intervention  in  Prussian  affairs,  but  could  not  but  see 
that  her  advice  was  unwelcome.  Once,  indeed,  she  went 
so  far  as  to  hold  an  interview  with  the  Emperor  Francis 
Joseph,  and  to  implore  him  not  to  ruin  the  prospects  of 
her  daughter’s  husband.  The  story  is  told  of  Princess 
Beatrice,  that  when  asked  what  she  would  have  for  her 
birthday,  she  demanded  the  head  of  Bismarck  on  a  charger. 
The  crown  prince  himself,  in  a  public  speech,  branded  a 
measure  of  Bismarck’s  as  “criminal”;  and,  on  another  oc¬ 
casion,  formally  asked  to  be  allowed  to  give  up  his  offices 
and  dignities  and  retire  into  private  life.  He  complained 
bitterly,  as  late  as  during  the  Franco-Prussian  War,  that 
he  was  being  dragged  against  his  will  from  one  scene  of 
carnage  to  another,  and  made  to  wade  through  blood  to 
the  throne  of  his  fathers. 

Into  the  conflict  in  the  Prussian  House,  a  new  element 
was  introduced  by  a  revival  of  the  Schleswig-Holstein 
difficulties,  which  gave  Bismarck  the  opportunity  he  had 
been  waiting  for  of  testing  the  reorganized  army,  and 
which  furthered  his  schemes  for  uniting  Germany  under 
Prussia’s  leadership.  The  turns  and  intricacies  of  this 
most  involved  of  questions  need  not  concern  us  here  — 
Lord  Palmerston  once  said  that  only  three  persons  had 
ever  understood  the  matter :  one  was  dead,  one  crazy,  and 
he  himself,  the  third,  had  forgotten  what  it  was  all  about. 
Prussia  had  fought  first  for,  then  against,  the  insurgents,  — 


Bismarck 
and  the 
English  in¬ 
fluence  at 
court. 


Genesis 
of  the 
Schleswig- 
Holstein 
troubles. 


/ 


386 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  prince 
of  Augus- 
lburg. 


b 


A 

r 


the  Czar  having  upbraided  Frederick  William  for  joining 
hands  with  revolution.  The  last  peace  with  Denmark,  in 
1850,  had  left  the  provinces  to  their  own  devices  ;  but  the 
London  protocol  of  that  year  and  the  London  Treaty  of 
1852,  signed  by  all  the  great  powers,  had  declared  for  the 
integrity  of  the  Danish  kingdom.  It  stipulated,  however, 
that  Schleswig-Holstein  should  retain  its  separate  political 
organization,  even  though  under  the  same  rulei  as  Den¬ 
mark  ;  and  that  the  rights  of  the  Germans,  who  formed 
five-sixths  of  the  population  of  the  duchies,  should  be 
respected.  In  order  to  provide  against  future  dangers, 
the  protocol  had  further  arranged  that,  —  contrary  to  the 
rule  of  succession  in  Holstein  at  least, — the  heir  to  the 
duchies  should  be  a  prince  of  the  house  of  Gliicksburg, 
who  was  also  heir  to  the  Danish  crown.  The  Duke  of 
Augustenburg,  the  nearest  of  the  other  claimants,  had 
resigned  his  pretensions  in  return  for  a  large  sum  of 
money. 

The  “  protocol  prince,”  Christian  of  Gliicksburg,  suc-^ 
ceeded,  in  1863,  to  the  throne,  and  immediately  crowned' 
a  decade  of  Danish  oppression  by  publishing  a  constitu¬ 
tion  which  treated  Schleswig  as  an  integral  part  of  the 
monarchy,  —  disregarding  its  union  with  Holstein,  which 
had  lasted  for  five  hundred  years,  and  defying  the  very 
protocol  to  which  he  owed  his  own  accession.  In  his 
defence  it  must  be  said,  that  the  powerful,  so-called  Eider- 
Danish,  party  had  driven  him  to  this  step,  under  threat  of 
revolution.  But  the  news  of  his  act  roused  a  flood  of  in¬ 
dignation  in  Germany.  When  the  son  of  that  Augusten¬ 
burg  who  had  sold  his  claims  in  1852,  came  forward  with 
the  assertion  that  he  had  never  consented  to  the  act  of 
renunciation,  he  was  received  with  enthusiasm  by  the 
people  of  Germany  as  the  rightful  heir ;  and  the  various 
parliaments  voted  him  their  support. 


3 


THE  RECKONING  WITH  AUSTRIA  387 

Hi 

But  Prussia  and  Austria  had  signed  the  Treaty  of  Lon¬ 
don  as  independent  European  powers,  not  as  members  of 
the  German  Confederation,  —  which  organization,  indeed, 
had  not  even  given  its  sanction.  For  a  moment  they  for¬ 
got  their  own  rivalries,  which  had  become  so  bitter,  of  late, 
that  Austria  had  been  categorically  refused  admission  into 
the  Zollverein.  William,  ostensibly  because  of  a  slight 
implied  in  the  manner  of  the  invitation,  had  not  attended 
a  meeting  of  the  princes  held  at  Frankfort,  under  Austrian 
auspices,  for  the  sake  of  settling  the  German  question. 
Even  now,  in  this  matter  of  Schleswig-Holstein,  although 
the  immediate  interests  of  the  two  powers  were  the  same, 
their  ultimate  aims  were  very  different.  Francis  Joseph 
would  have  liked  a  return  to  the  basis  of  the  London  pro¬ 
tocol;  while  to  Bismarck  the  whole  incident  was  simply  a 
step  to  greater  things  —  to  the  annexation  of  the  duchies  to 
Prussia,  to  the  assumption  by  Prussia  of  the  supremacy  in 
Germany.  Only  a  few  months  previously  he  had  written : 
“  War  alone  can  solve  the  Danish  question  in  a  sense  favor¬ 
able  to  us ;  provocation  to  such  a  war  can  be  found  at  any 
moment  in  which  our  relation  to  the  great  powers  is  favor¬ 
able  for  military  operations.”  He  would  go  hand  in  hand 
with  Austria.  He  would  uphold  the  London  protocol,  until 
some  open  act  of  hostility  on  the  part  of  Denmark  should, 
by  the  very  principles  of  international  law  itself,  render  all 
treaties  null  and  void,  and  give  him  free  play.  Then,  if 
obtainable,  he  would  achieve  the  annexation ;  if  not,  he 
would  be  content  to  see  the  duchies  under  an  independent 
prince.  From  the  very  first,  he  had  urged  the  appropriation 
of  the  prize,  —  whereat,  as  he  writes  in  his  memoirs,  “  his 
Majesty  seemed  to  think  I  had  spoken  under  the  bacchana¬ 
lian  influences  of  a  breakfast  party,”  and  the  crown  prince 
had  “raised  his  hands  to  heaven,  as  if  he  doubted  the 
soundness  of  my  senses.” 


i 

■ 


Bismarck’s 
plans  with 
regard  to 
Schleswig- 
Holstein. 


388 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Austrian- 
Prussian 
ultimatum 
to  Den¬ 
mark. 


Initial 
events  of 
the  Danish 
War. 


When  the  Diet,  in  its  enthusiasm,  voted  federal  execution 
in  Holstein,  and  sent  an  army  of  Saxons  and  Hanoverians 
against  Christian  IX.,  Austria  and  Prussia,  although  they 
had  voted  for  the  execution,  held  their  armies  aloof.  It 
vexed  them  that  the  young  Augustenburg  took  the  whole 
demonstration  as  in  favor  of  himself ;  that  he  formed  a  little 
court  at  Kiel,  chose  a  cabinet,  and  began  to  exeicise  influ¬ 
ence  in  public  affairs.  Bismarck,  especially,  objected  to 
binding  his  hands  by  acknowledging  this  new  candidate ; 
and  the  two  powers  at  last  determined  to  checkmate  the 
pretender  by  occupying  Schleswig  themselves.  The  Diet 
was  informed  that  Austria  and  Prussia,  having  seen  their 
wishes  persistently  thwarted,  intended  to  act  alone  in  the 
matter  by  virtue  of  their  position  as  European  powers. 
An  ultimatum  was  sent  to  Denmark,  and  Prussia  and  Aus¬ 
tria  came  to  an  agreement  to  determine  the  future  of  the 
duchies  not  otherwise  than  by  mutual  arrangement  and 
common  consent  —  as  if  mutual  arrangement  and  common 
consent  were  ever  likely  to  be  obtainable  where  one  of  the 
parties  had  the  preconceived  idea  of  appropriating  the 
whole ! 

During  all  this  time,  in  the  Prussian  House  of  Represen¬ 
tatives  the  bitter  contentions  continued.  Virchow  declared 
that,  through  Bismarck’s  policy,  Prussia  was  becoming  a 
mere  satellite  of  Austria;  that  the  very  existence  of  the 
state  was  being  threatened ;  that  the  president  of  the  min¬ 
istry  had  no  conception  of  a  national  policy.  The  desired 
loan  of  twelve  million  thalers  was  refused ;  and  Bismarck 
thundered  out  that  he  would  make  war  with  or  without 
the  consent  of  the  Diet,  and  would  take  the  money  wher¬ 
ever  he  could  lay  hands  upon  it. 

The  great  trio. That  were  to  lead  Prussia  through  im¬ 
measurably  greater  wars  were  already  beginning  their 
activity.  It  was  Roon,  then  minister  of  war,  who  had 


THE  RECKONING  WITH  AUSTRIA 


389 


warmly  lecommended  the  calling1  of  Bismarck  to  the  min- 
istry.  It  was  Moltk§  who  drew  up  the  plan  of  campaign, 
which,  however,  was  modified  in  practice  by  the  com¬ 
mander-in-chief,  Wrangel.  The  latter,  already  eighty 
years  old,  and  lacking  in  vigor  and  decision,  needlessly 
protracted  the  war. 

As  it  was,  the  army,  about  sixty  thousand  strong,  crossed 
the  Eider,  on  the  1st  of  February,  1864  ;  and,  by  the  20th 
of  July,  the  final  truce  had  been  declared.  The  great 
events  of  the  war  were  the  capture  of  jhe  Danewerk,  the 
storming  of  the  redoubts  of  DuppelfanTthTd^aring  of 
the  Danish  islands. 

The  Danewerk  was  a  line  of  fortresses,  extending  for 
fifty  miles  or  more,  between  the  town  of  Schleswig  and 
the  source  of  the  river  Reide.  All  that  nature  and  art 
could  do  had  combined  to  strengthen  this  line  of  de¬ 
fence  ;  and  the  Emperor  Napoleon  III.  was  of  the  opinion 
that,  by  it,  the  advance  of  the  Germans  might  be  checked 
for  a  space  of  two  years.  Within  five  days,  on  the  con¬ 
trary,  the  Danish  army  had  been  dislodged,  or,  rather,  had 
dislodged  itself  from  its  strong  position.  It  was  bitterly 
cold,  and  the  marshes,  which  were  otherwise  a  great  pro¬ 
tection,  were  frozen  over.  General  de  Meza,  the  com¬ 
mander-in-chief,  dreaded  a  long  bivouac  in  the  snow.  He 
might  have  taken  the  offensive,  but  feared  to  risk  all  on 
the  result  of  a  pitched  battle  —  his  orders  being  to  avoid 
running  Denmark’s  one  available  army  into  unnecessary 
danger.  He  preferred,  instead,  to  retire  to  the  heights  of 
Duppel,  facing  the  island  of  Alsen. 

Great  as  was  the  triumph  of  the  Germans,  it  would  have  The  re- 
been  greater  had  Wrangel  followed  Moltke’s  plan  and,  in  doubts  of 
the  beginning,  cut  off  the  retreat  of  the  Danes  by  sending  a  Dtippel> 
part  of  his  forces  across  the  lower  Schlei,  and  around  the 
Danewerk.  One  of  M(rangeks  colonels  wrote  to  Moltke  : 


390 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  Lon¬ 
don  Con¬ 
ference. 


«  Few  men  are  capable  of  carrying  out  a  simple  idea  in  an 
equally  simple  manner.  ...  The  Danes  were  cleverer  on 
the  4th  of  February  than  we.  We  were  two  days  late 
in  surrounding  them.”  The  capture  of  the  redoubts  of 
Diippel,  which  was  undertaken  by  Prince  Frederic 
Charles  of  Prussia,  was  a  longer  affair,  and  required  weeks 
of  active  preparation.  The  storm  itself  was  the  matter  of 
half  an  hour,  the  Danes  having  taken  refuge  in  impro¬ 
vised  earthworks,  a  short  distance  away,  from  an  incessant 
cannonading.  At  a  given  signal  the  cannon  ceased,  an 
the  Prussian  storming  columns  rushed  upon  the  redoubts. 
A  few  hours  more  of  fighting,  and  the  Danish  army  had 
suffered  a  signal  defeat,  their  guns  being  captured  and 
many  prisoners  taken;  although  the  losses  m  dead  and 
wounded  were  about  equal  on  both  sides.  The  whole  of 
Schleswig  now  lay  open  to  the  conquerors  ;  and  King 
William  of  Prussia  came  himself  to  the  scene  of  war,  o 
express  his  thanks  to  his  brave  army.  The  Danish  forces 
withdrew  to  the  islands  of  Fiinen  and  Alsen,  and  the 

German  troops  proceeded  to  Jutland. 

The  next  link  in  the  chain  of  events  was  a  European 
congress,  held  at  London,  under  the  auspices  of  England 
and  France.  It  was  an  assembly  full  of  peaceful  mten  s  , 
but,  as  Sybel  has  said,  there  was  the  wish  among  the 
powers  concerned  to  take  as  little  as  possible  from  Den¬ 
mark  and  to  give  as  little  as  possible  to  Germany.  Every 
plan  imaginable  was  discussed :  Schleswig-Holstein  was 
to  be  politically  independent,  but  joined  by  a  personal 
union  with  Denmark ;  Schleswig  was  to  be  divided  be¬ 
tween  Prussia  and  Denmark  — and  any  number  of  division 
lines  were  suggested;  the  Prince  of  Augustenburg  was 
one  moment  to  be  recognized,  the  next  he  was  not.  Rus¬ 
sia  thought  of  reviving  an  old  claim  of  her  own  Czar,  and 
of  transferring  it  to  the  Duke  of  Oldenburg.  Prussia 


THE  RECKONING  WITH  AUSTRIA 


391 


was  willing  that  the  people  of  Schleswig  should  vote  to 
what  nation  they  should  belong;  but  the  conference  refused 
to  consider  such  a  plan.  Now  that  blood  had  |lowi^  Bis¬ 
marck  considered  himself  no  longer  bound  by  the  agree¬ 
ments  of  1852.  England  and  Russia,  and  even  Denmark 
herself  at  the  last,  wished  the  maintenance  of  those  trea¬ 
ties.  After  two  months  of  negotiation,  during  which 
time  hostilities  had  been  suspended,  the  conference  sepa¬ 
rated. 

During  the  sessions  of  the  London  Conference,  the  Bismarck 
king  of  Prussia  received  an  address  from  the  people  of  interviews 
the  duchies,  with  thirty  thousand  signatures,  begging  •^u»lls^en* 
that  Schleswig-Holstein  might  be  freed  from  Denmark,  ^ 
and  might  become  either  an  independent  state,  or,  if  need 
be,  a  part  of  the  Prussian  monarchy.  The  idea  of  Prus¬ 
sian  annexation  had  by  this  time  been  freely  discussed  in 
more  than  one  direction.  Austria  was  naturally  alarmed 
at  such  a  possibility,  and  had  tried  at  the  conference  to 
make  propaganda  for  a  personal  union  of  the  duchies 
with  Denmark, — a  proposition  which  Denmark  herself  had 
scornfully  rejected.  Austria  had  then  turned  to  the  oft- 
discarded  idea  of  acknowledging  the  Prince  of  Augusten- 
burg;  but  Prussia  had  felt  bound  to  require  certain 
assurances  as  to  what  policy  that  candidate  would  be 
likely  to  pursue  as  regarded  herself.  Bismarck  had  him¬ 
self  looked  into  the  matter,  had  tried  the  prince  in  the 
balance,  and  had  found  him  wanting.  Augustenburg 
was  too  sure  of  his  position,  backed  as  he  was  by  public 
opinion  both  in  the  duchies  and  in  Germany.  He  was 
unwilling  to  submit  to  any  trammels.  “  It  would  be 
better  to  try  and  win  my  heart,”  he  said,  “  than  to  bind 
me  fast  with  paragraphs.”  “We  had  hoped,”  Bismarck 
answered  dryly,  “  by  driving  out  the  Danes,  to  have  won 
your  heart  already.” 


* 


392 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  land¬ 
ing  on 
Alsen. 


The  peace 
with  Den¬ 
mark. 


Hostilities  were  reopened  within  three  days  after  the 
closing  of  the  conference.  The  outspoken  goal  of  Austria 
and  Prussia  now  was  the  definite  separation  of  the  duchies 
from  Denmark ;  it  was  to  depend  on  circumstances  what 
should  happen  after  that.  Wrangel  had  resigned  the 
chief  command,  and  his  mantle  had  descended  on  the 
shoulders  of  Prince  Frederick  Charles.  The  latter  had 
intrusted  General  von  Bittenfeld  with  the  task  of  land¬ 
ing  his  army  on  the  shores  of  Alsen,  which  was  gani 
soned  by  ten  thousand  Danes.  The  manoeuvre  was  carried 
out  with  perfect  success,  batteries  on  the  shore  protecting 
the  troops,  as  they  crossed  over,  from  the  attacks  of  the 
Danish  war-ships.  Seven  hundred  of  the  Danes  were 
killed  and  wounded;  twenty-five  hundred  were  taken 
prisoner;  and  the  rest  were  driven  to  an  extremity  of 
the  island,  whence  they  were  allowed  to  escape  to  their 
fleet.  The  blow  was  a  final  one  for  Denmark ;  and  the 
German  army  pressed  forward  unopposed,  in  Jutland  as 
well  as  on  the  islands. 

It  was  the  Eider-Danish  party  that  had  brought  Den¬ 
mark  to  such  a  pass  by  plunging  her  into  this  unhallowed 
war.  In  dismissing  his  cabinet,  King  Christian  covered 
his  departing  prime  minister  with  bitter  but  well-merited 
reproaches.  The  new  ministry  at  once  sent  to  Berlin  and 
Vienna,  to  ask  for  a  truce  and  for  proposals  as  to  the 
grounds  of  a  final  peace.  According  to  the  preliminaries 
drawn  up  in  August,  and  definitely  accepted  in  October, 
Denmark  was  to  surrender  un&onditionally  to  her  two 
enemies :  Holstein,  Lauenburg,  and  almost  the  whole  of 
Schleswig,  and  was  to  accept  any  arrangement  as  to  the 
future  of  the  duchies  that  Austria  and  Prussia  might 
make.  The  sundered  provinces  were  to  be  saddled  with 
their  due  proportion  of  the  Danish  national  debt,  and 
were  also  to  bear  the  costs  pf  the  war.  On  this  latter 


THE  RECKONING  WITH  AUSTRIA  393 

point,  Denmark  was  inflexible.  The  country  was  on  the 
verge  of  ruin,  and,  bereft  of  nearly  half  its  territorial  pos¬ 
sessions,  could  never  have  borne  a  great  financial  burden. 
The  Danish  commissioner,  Quade,  refused  to  sign  the 
peace  rather  than  comply  with  such  a  demand. 

The  Danish  War  had  been  brought  to  a  final,  and,  for 
Germany,  happy  conclusion.  It  was  Bismarck  whose  policy 
had  effected  such  brilliant  results.  He  later  declared  re¬ 
peatedly,  that  he  considered  the  diplomatic  moves  of  the 
year  1864  as  the  most  difficult  and  the  most  successful  of 
his  life. 

4 

After  the  war,  the  court  of  Vienna  did  its  utmost  to 
come  to  a  lasting  understanding,  and  to  form  a  lasting 
treaty,  with  Prussia.  The  old  question  of  entering  the 
Zollverein  or  Customs  Union,  was  revived;  and  the 
Austrian  minister,  Rechberg,  tried  every  means  to  induce 
Bismarck  to  relent  in  the  matter.  The  latter  considered 
that  a  treaty  of  close  alliance  between  the  two  powers 
would  answer  all  necessary  purposes ;  that  a  unity  of 
mercantile  interests  did  not  exist;  and  that  the  plan  of 
entering  the  Union  was  simply  a  political  move.  The 
matter  led  to  a  ministerial  crisis  in  Vienna;  and  Rechberg, 
reproached  with  the  futility  of  his  previous  policy,  and 
with  having  brought  about  the  isolation  of  Austria  in 
Europe,  lost  his  place.  Had  he  remained  in  office,  it  is 
probable  that  the  Austrian-Prussian  War  would  have 
been  greatly  delayed ;  for  a  close  alliance  was  his  constant 
Bfoal.  However,  as  Bismarck  once  said,  “Sooner  or  later 
it  had  to  come  to  war,  and  it  is,  perhaps,  fortunate  that  it 
happened  then,  under  comparatively  favorable  circum¬ 
stances.”  Already,  in  the  Frankfort  days,  he  had  written 
home,  “  I  foresee  that  one  day  we  shall  have  to  fight  for 
Dur  very  existence  with  Austria.” 

More  and  more  the  designs  of  the  two  powers  showed 


Irrecon¬ 
cilable 
designs  of 
Austria  and 
Prussia. 


394 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  Treaty 
of  Gastein. 


themselves  absolutely  irreconcilable.  William  made  his 
recognition  of  Augustenburg  contingent  on  conditions 
that  would  have  reduced  Schleswig-Holstein  to  a  vassal 
state  :  her  commerce  was  to  be  restricted,  her  strong 
places  occupied,  and  even  her  armies  placed  under  Prus- 
sian  leadership.  Austria,  on  the  other  hand,  was  willing 
to  support  Augustenburg,  if  the  latter  would  engage  to  com 
elude  no  private  treaty  whatever  with  Prussia.  Her  minis¬ 
ters  declared  the  formation  of  a  half-sovereign  state  the 
most  incomplete  of  all  possible  solutions  of  the  difficulty. 
To  the  military  suzerainty  she  never  would  and  never  could 
give  her  consent.  On  the  receipt  of  this  answer,  Bismarck 
called  upon  Moltke  to  calculate  just  what  forces  Austria 
would  be  able  to  muster  in  case  of  war.  From  being 
indifferent  to  the  person  of  Augustenburg,  the  king  began 
to  regard  him  with  great  aversion;  while  Austria  came 
more  and  more  to  espouse  his  cause. 

From  now  on,  the  breach  between  the  two  powers 
widened  relentlessly.  When  King  William  issued  an  order 
transferring  Prussia’s  marine  station  from  Danzig  to  Kiel, 
a  stern  protest  was  sent  to  Berlin  which  was  answered 
politely  but  equally  firmly.  In  June,  1865,  on  the  other 
hand,  King  William  complained  to  the  emperor  of  Augus- 
tenburg’s  conduct,  declaring  it  to  be  a  derogation  to  his 
own  royal  dignity.  Pending  the  answer,  which  was  evasive 
when  it  came,  an  inquiry  was  made  into  the  military 
resources  of  Prussia ;  and  the  plan  was  discussed,  in  a 
ministerial  conference,  of  carrying  off  the  prince  on  a 
Prussian  war-ship.  Bismarck  was  already  negotiating 
with  Italy  for  an  alliance  which  should  gain  Venice  for  the 
latter  power,  and  should  draw  off  to  the  southern  frontier 
a  larger  portion  of  the  Austrian  forces.  Steps  had  also 
been  taken  to  render  amicable  the  Emperor  Napoleon,  who 
desired  a  free  Italy,  and,  beyond  that,  some  little  compen- 


THE  RECKONING  WITH  AUSTRIA 


395 


j 


5 


r 


sation  for  his  own  kindness  —  some  “trinkgeld,”  as  his 
enemies  called  it.  The  Treaty  of  Gastein,  brought  about 
by  Austria  s  internal  troubles  and  King  AV illiam’s  sincere 
desire  for  peace,  proved  but  a  momentary  obstacle  to  the 
warlike  current.  It  was  agreed  that  Austria  should 
administer  Holstein,  and  Prussia,  Schleswig,  until  a 
better  arrangement  could  be  made  ;  that  Kiel  should 
be  a  federal  harbor,  Rendsburg  a  federal  fortress.  Lau- 
enburg  was  sold  outright  to  Prussia  for  two  and  a  half 
million  thalers. 

Again  the  brand  of  discord  was  the  Prince  of  Augus- 
tenburg.  His  party  continued  to  make  propaganda  in 
Holstein,  and  Prussia  considered  that  the  Austrian  gov¬ 
ernor,  Gablenz,  did  too  little  to  stop  the  public  demon¬ 
strations.  Newspapers  spoke  of  “his  Highness,  the 
Duke.”  In  many  of  the  churches  prayers  were  made  for 
“Duke  Frederick  of  Holstein”  instead  of  for  the  em¬ 
peror.  The  Princess  of  Augustenburg  travelled  from 
Altona  to  Kiel  as  only  royal  personages  are  accustomed 
to  travel  —  past  gayly  decorated  stations,  and  greeted 
everywhere  by  deputations  and  by  maidens  in  white  gar¬ 
ments  bearing  gifts  of  flowers.  The  climax  was  reached, 
when  Gablenz  permitted  the  holding  of  a  huge  assembly 
which  gave  cheers  for  the  “  lawful,  beloved  prince,  Duke 
Frederick.”  Bismarck  at  once  told  his  ambassador  to 
demand  redress  in  Vienna,  and  to  inform  that  court  that 
“  a  negative  or  evasive  answer  to  our  request  would  con¬ 
vince  us  that  the  imperial  government  has  no  longer  the 
desire  to  proceed  with  us  along  a  common  way.”  The 
answer  came,  sharp  and  clear :  “  The  emperor’s  minister 
must  decidedly  disavow  the  claim  of  the  royal  Prussian 
ambassador  to  receive  a  justification  for  an  act  of  the 
administration  of  Holstein.” 

Even  this  did  not  necessarily  mean  war,  but  the  situa- 


Annoying 
demonstra¬ 
tions  in 
Augusten* 
burg’s 
favor. 


896 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


tion  had  become  so  tense  that  the  wildest  rumors  as  to 
mobilization  of  forces  were  believed  on  both  sides,  and  a 
mere  playful  remark  of  Bismarck’s  to  a  lady  at  a  dinner 
party  was  magnified  into  a  declaration  of  intended  hostili¬ 
ties.  “  Is  it  true,”  asked  the  Countess  Hohenlohe,  “  that 
you  are  going  to  fight  Austria  and  conquer  Saxony  ? 

«  Of  course,”  was  the  answer,  “  that  has  been  my  object 
since  I  first  became  minister.”  Strangely  enough,  the 
minister’s  laughing  prophecy,  that  the  Austrians  would  be 
defeated  near  the  countess’s  own  estates  in  Bohemia,  was 


to  prove  almost  literally  true. 

Prussia  struck  a  new  blow  at  the  party  of  Augusten- 
burg  by  decreeing,  that  any  attempt  to  undermine  the 
provisional  government  in  the  duchies  would  be  punish¬ 
able  by  house  of  correction.  Austria  inquired  officially  if 
Prussia  still  considered  herself  bound  by  the  Gastem 
Treaty;  and  informed  the  German  courts  that,  should  the 
answer  prove  unsatisfactory,  she  would  submit  the  whole 
matter  to  the  decision  of  the  federal  Diet,  and  move  the 
mobilization  of  a  federal  army.  This  mere  threat  set 
Prussia  to  arming  in  furious  haste,  brought  about  the 
consummation  of  the  Italian  alliance,  and  caused  Bismarck 
to  make  one  of  the  master  moves  of  his  career  by  bringing 
\  into  the  discussion  a  plan  for  reorganizing  the  whole  con¬ 
stitution  of  Germany.  He  was  determined,  should  Austria 
I  find  it  possible  to  pass  such  a  vote  of  federal  execution, 
that  Prussia  should  no  longer  belong  to  the  German 
Confederation.  He  would  found  a  confederation  of 
his  own,  which  the  other  states,  should  they  not  do  so 
voluntarily,  must  be  forced  into  joining.  He,  the  ultra¬ 
conservative  of  1848,  was  willing  now  that  the  German 
people  should  have  a  general  parliament  chosen  by  pop¬ 
ular  election.  If  war  was  to  come,  posterity  should  not 
say  that  the  cause  was  a  trivial  dispute  regarding  the 


Austria 

threatens 

federal 

execution 

against 

Prussia. 


V 


# 


i 

THE  RECKONING  WITH  AUSTRIA  397 

ownership  of  a  province.  It  was  to  be  a  fight  rather 
for  the  holiest  privileges  of  man  —  for  nationality,  for 
free  government. 

Early  in  June,  Austria  carried  out  her  threat  of  bringing 
the  Schleswig-Holstein  matter  before  the  Diet,  and  —  what 
Prussia  deemed  a  direct  breach  of  the  Gastein  Treaty  — 
ordered  Gablenz  to  call  together  the  Holstein  estates, 
thus  conjuring  up  the  spirit  of  revolution.  Manteuffel, 
the  Prussian  governor  of  Schleswig,  announced  that,  since 
a  return  had  been  made  to  the  condition  of  things  before 
the  Treaty  of  Gastein,  he  must  once  more  place  garrisons 
in  Holstein.  As  his  troops  advanced,  Gablenz  retreated, 
complaining  loudly,  for  his  own  part,  of  the  breach  of  the 
treaty.  The  fateful  vote  in  the  Diet  —  the  most  fateful, 
doubtless,  in  all  German  history  —  took  place  on  June  14, 
1866.  ,  By  a  majority  of  three,  the  mobilization  of  the 
federal  forces  was  decreed,  —  Austria’s  chief  supporters 
being  Bavaria,  Hanover,  Saxony,  Wurtemberg,  Nassau, 
electoral  Hesse,  and  the  free  city  of  Frankfort.  The 
original  form  of  the  motion  had  had  to  be  changed,  ag  the 
kind  of  execution  that  Austria  wanted  was  unknown  to 
the  Act  of  Confederation.  It  was  this  earlier  form  —  be¬ 
traying,  as  it  did,  Austria’s  real  intent — that  the  Prussian 
envoy  referred  to  when,  rising  from  his  chair,  he  declared 
that  the  law  and  the  federal  constitution  had  been  broken. 
His  Majesty,  the  king,  he  proceeded,  should  consider  the 
treaties  of  confederation  at  an  end ;  but  intended  to  hold 
fast  to  the  principles  of  national  unity.  He  then  laid  before 
the  assembly  the  programme  of  a  new  confederation,  which 
excluded  Austria,  divided  the  highest  military  command 
between  Prussia  and  Bavaria,  and  arranged  for  a  German 
parliament  to  be  chosen  by  popular  election.  The  German 
states  were  invited  to  join.  Refusal  meant  war.  When  the 
president  of  the  Diet  inveighed  against  Prussia’s  conduct, 

t 


The  voting 
of  federal 
execution. 


398 


A  SH'  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Prussia  and 
Austria  at 

war. 


and  declared  the  federation  indissoluble,  the  majority 
did  refuse. 

The  whole  m  aery  for  starting  the  great  war  had 
been  so  perfecte  n  the  Prussian  side  that,  before  four 
days  were  over,  King  William  could  issue  a  stirring  mani¬ 
festo  to  his  people:  “The  fatherland  is  in  danger,”  it 
began ;  “  Austria  and  a  great  part  of  Germany  stand  in 
arms  against  it.  .  .  .  Austria  will  not  forget  that  her 
princes  once  ruled  Germany.  In  the  younger  but  power¬ 
fully  developing  Prussia  she  will  '  not  acknowledge  a 
natural  ally,  but  merely  a  rival  and  an  enemy.”  “  The  old 
unhallowed  jealousy,”  the  writing  continued,  u  has  flared 
up  anew  into  blazing  flames.  Prussia  must  be  weakened, 
annihilated,  dishonored.  .  .  .  We  are  surrounded  by  ene¬ 
mies  whose  battle-cry  is,  down  with  Prussia  !  u  Should 
God  lend  us  the  victory,”  was  the  solemn  and  prophetic 
conclusion,  “  then  shall  we  also  have  strength  to  renew, 
in  a  firmer  and  more  hallowed  form,  the  loose  bond  which, 
more  in  name  than  in  deed,  holds  together  the  German 
lands,  and  which  now  is  being  torn  asunder  by  those  who 
dread  the  might  and  right  of  the  national  spirit.  May 
God  be  with  us !  ” 

In  numbers  the  Prussian  and  Austrian  armies  were  not 
unequal,  the  scale  being  rather  in  Austria’s  favor.  But 
that  was  a  mere  fortuitous  circumstance.  In  everything 
where  human  foresight  was  concerned,  Prussia  had  im¬ 
measurably  the  advantage.  A  great  part  of  the  Austrian 
soldiers  were  enjoying  leave  of  absence ;  and,  as  a  matter 
of  principle,  on  account  of  conflicts  of  nationality,  their 
regiments  were  quartered  far  from  their  homes.  The  Prus¬ 
sians,  whose  breech-loading  needle-guns  could  fire  three 
shots  to  one  of  the  Austrian  muzzle-loaders,  had  been  trained 
in  intricate  evolutions ;  the  Austrians  pinned  their  whole 
faith  on  weighty  onslaughts.  Prussia  had  reserves  and 


I 

jj 

THE  RECKONING  WITH  AUSTRIA  399 

a  trained  LandweJir ;  while  Austria,  for  want  of  funds, 
had  exempted  hundreds  of  thousands  of  soldiers  from 
their  longer  term  of  service  in  the  line,  and  had  no 
organized  forces  from  which  to  draw. 

Under  capable  leaders  a  little  enthusiasm  might  have 
nullified  these  evils ;  but  Benedek,  the  commander-in- 
chief  on  the  northern  scene  of  war,  a  man  of  tried  and 
proven  personal  bravery,  went  into  the  struggle  with 
a  despondency  and  a  dread  of  the  worst  that  never  left 
him.  Against  his  own  will  he  was  withdrawn  from  Italy, 
where  he  knew  every  inch  of  the  ground,  to  a  field  where 
—  to  use  his  own  simile  —  he  felt  like  an  ass,  and  did  not 
even  know  which  way  the  Elbe  flowed..  He  well  knew 
the  evils  of  the  military  system  of  Austria,  and  had  often 
spoken  of  them  with  bitter  mockery.  He  had  long  utterly 
refused  to  accept  the  command,  and  had  urged  the  emperor 
to  give  it  to  another.  Only  after  a  remarkable  interview 
with  the  Archduke  Albrecht  —  who  solemnly  adjured  him 
to  accept  the  position  as  a  sacrifice  to  the  imperial  house, 
which  could  not  afford  to  have  one  of  its  own  members 
suffer  the  odium  that  would  come  from  defeat  —  had  he  at 
last  relented.  He  knew,  as  he  declared  a  few  weeks  later, 
that  Austria  was  playing  va  banque;  that  he  was  staking 
his  own  civil  and  military  honor.  And  to  add  to  his  mis¬ 
fortunes,  he  chose  as  military  adviser  a  man  whose  repu¬ 
tation  stood  very  high,  Major  General  Krismanic,  but 
whose  counsels  proved  most  faulty. 

While  Austria  labored  under  the  disadvantage  of  having 
i  a  double  line  of  boundary  to  protect,  it  must  not  be  for¬ 
gotten  that  Prussia  had  against  her  the  greater  part  of 
Germany.  By  rapidity  of  movement,  however,  she  pro¬ 
posed  to  prevent  a  union  of  the  forces  of  the  small  states ; 
and,  with  forty-eight  thousand  men  —  which  was  all  she 
could  spare  from  the  main  army  —  to  hold  one  hundred 

I 


Benedek 

commands 

the 

Austrian 

army. 


Overthrow 
of  Saxony, 
Hesse, 
Hanover, 
and 

Nassau. 


400  A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

and  nineteen  thousand  in  check.  The  definite  problems 
of  the  campaign  were  four  in  number :  Saxony,  Hesse, 
Hanover,  and  Nassau  were  first  to  be  overcome;  then  the 
same  army  was  to  be  sent  against  Bavaria  and  the  other 
South  German  states ;  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  million  men 
were  to  oppose  the  main  Austrian  army  in  Bohemia ;  while 
Italy,  with  some  one  hundred  and  sixty  thousand  more, 
was  to  invade  Austria  from  the  south. 

Saxony  and  Hesse  were  disposed  of  immediately. 
Within  a  space  of  three  days,  King  John  and  his  son 
were  exiles,  and  the  elector  was  a  prisoner  in  one  of  his 
own  castles.  The  conquest  of  Hanover  was  marked  by 
painful  incidents.  The  land  itself  fell  an  easy  prey,  but 
the  army  of  eighteen  thousand  men  was  allowed,  through 
carelessness,  to  march  away  to  the  south.  Moltke  at 
Berlin,  having  ordered  Falkenstein  to  cut  off  its  re¬ 
treat,  supposed  that  he  had  done  so,  which  was  not 
the  case.  He  informed  King  George  accordingly,  thus 
inducing  him  to  capitulate.  Injured  in  his  feelings  and 
considering  himself  betrayed,  the  king  ordered  an  attack 
on  Eisenach,  which  was  countermanded  by  the  Duke  of 
Coburg  and  a  Hanoverian  major,  under  the  impression 
that  George  had  not  received  the  latest  despatches  from 
Berlin.  A  skirmish  at  Langensalza  ended  favorably  for 
the  Hanoverians ;  but  the  Prussian  troops  soon  closed  in 
on  them,  relentlessly,  from  all  directions,  and  they  were 
obliged  to  surrender.  The  king  and  his  son  were  for¬ 
bidden  to  enter  the  confines  of  Hanover.  Falkenstein 
pressed  forward  almost  unopposed,  but  had  scarcely 
entered  Frankfort  in  triumph,  when,  on  account  of  his 
earlier  disobedience,  he  was  superseded  by  Manteuffel. 

From  Frankfort  Manteuffel  led  his  forces,  which  were 
oTeatly  augmented,  to  one  victorious  field  after  another. 
At  Bischofsheim,  on  the  Tauber,  the  federal  troops  were 


I  ‘ 

If 

THE  RECKONING  WITH  AUSTRIA  401 

>  | 

repulsed ;  and,  after  several  successful  encounters  near 
Wurzburg,  the  Prussians  drove  an  army  nearly  double  the 
size  of  their  own  across  the  river  Maine.  They  remained 
in  this  region  until  the  truce  of  Nikolsburg  put  an  end  to 
hostilities. 

On  the  extreme  southern  field  of  war,  in  the  meantime, 
the  Italians  had  allowed  themselves  to  be  defeated  by 
forces  vastly  inferior  in  numbers  to  their  own.  Never  was 
the  science  of  dallying  carried  to  such  perfection,  and  never 
was  a  commander  torn  by  more  conflicting  interests  than 
the  chief  of  the  general  staff,  La  Marmora.  About  two 
hundred  and  thirty  thousand  regular  soldiers  had  been 
brought  together,  and  Garibaldi  had  raised  a  troop  of  thirty- 
five  thousand  volunteers;  in  addition  to  which  one  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand  men  guarded  the  fortresses  and  stood  in 
reserve.  Yet  this  immense  force  accomplished  less  than 
nothing,  although  the  Austrians  only  opposed  it  by  one 
hundred  and  forty  thousand  men,  —  nearly  thirty  thousand 
of  whom  were  stationed  far  apart  from  the  rest  in  the  Tyrol, 
in  Istria,  and  in  Friaul.  La  Marmora  was,  unfortunately,  a 
politician  as  well  as  a  leader  of  armies.  He  had  learned 
that  Austria  did  not  lay  much  stress  on  the  possession  of 
Venice,  and  that  Italy  was  likely  to  secure  it  whatever  the 
outcome  of  the  struggle.  Napoleon  had  hinted  that  Aus¬ 
tria’s  honor  required  her  to  strike  a  few  blows,  but  that  the 
Italians  had  better  not  make  war  too  seriously.  There  is 
scarcely  a  doubt  but  that  La  Marmora  hoped  and  expected 
to  carry  through  the  campaign  without  any  serious  encoun¬ 
ters.  He  found  it  most  inconvenient  to  treat  with  the 
Prussian  envoy,  Bernhardi,  who  had  been  sent  to  discuss 
with  him  the  plan  of  campaign:  Bernhardi’s  suggestion 
that  the  Italian  army  should  fight  its  way  to  the  Danube 
and  effect  a  junction  with  the  Prussians,  was  received  as  an 
attempt  at  witticism  ;  while  the  Prussian  plan  of  sending 

VOL.  II  —  2d 


i 


The 

Italian  field 
of  war. 


402 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The 

battle  of 
Custozza. 


Garibaldi  to  raise  a  revolt  in  Hungary  was  most  distaste¬ 
ful,  the  ruin  of  Austria  being  the  last  thing  the  Italian 
politicians  desired. 

When,  on  the  23d  of  June,  La  Marmora  crossed  the 
little  river  Mincio,  which  formed  the  western  boundary  of 
the  Austro-Venetian  territory,  he  did  so  in  the  belief  that 
no  Austrians  would  oppose  him  this  side  of  the  Adige, 
But  he  soon  found  that  he  was  greatly  mistaken.  Early 
on  the  morning  of  June  24  the  Italian  army,  the  divisions 
of  which  were  widely  scattered,  was  forced  into  a  desperate 
struggle  with  a  large  Austrian  force,  under  the  cautious 
and  determined  leader,  Archduke  Charles.  The  battle  of 
Custozza  was  a  long  and  hard-fought  one,  and  individual 
Italian  regiments  did  brave  and  brilliant  service.  By 
midday,  the  result  was  by  no  means  decided,  and  the 
crown  prince,  Humbert,  —  who  had  thought  of  a  manoeuvre 
by  which  the  enemy  could  be  attacked  in  the  flank,  and  its 
line  of  retreat  cut  off,  —  sent  to  submit  his  plan  to  La  Mar¬ 
mora,  and  to  ask  his  consent  before  executing  it.  Strange 
to  say,  the  commander-in-chief  was  nowhere  to  be  found. 
He  had  already  given  up  the  day  for  lost,  had  left  the 
battlefield,  and  had  hastened  in  person  to  the  head  quartets 
of  General  Cucchiari,  who  was  miles  away,  asking  him  to 
come  to  the  assistance  of  the  oppressed  army.  Cucchiari 
informed  him  that  it  would  be  nightfall  before  the  com¬ 
mand  could  even  reach  his  different  brigades.  La  Mar¬ 
mora  broke  into  a  fit  of  weeping,  and  threatened  to  shoot 
himself.  No  wonder  the  day  at  Custozza  proved  dis¬ 
astrous.  The  Sardinian  crown  prince  and  the  other 
generals  waited  in  vain  for  their  commands.  Each 
brigade  fought  where  it  stood.  There  was  no  one  to 
order  a  retreat,  no  one  to  summon  the  reenforcements,  al¬ 
though  regiments  enough  were  at  hand  which  had  hardly 
engaged  at  all  in  the  fray.  For  ten  hours  the  brunt  of 


THE  RECKONING  WITH  AUSTRIA 


403 


the  attack  had  been  borne  by  sixty  thousand  men ;  while  as 
many  more  had  stood  idle  in  the  immediate  neighborhood, 
or,  at  all  events,  within  a  few  hours’  march.  It  is  surpris¬ 
ing  that  the  troops  did  as  well  as  they  did;  surprising,  too, 
that  the  Austrian  losses  outnumbered,  if  anything,  those 
of  their  antagonists. 

But  all  the  military  operations  that  had  as  yet  taken  The 
place  were  small  in  comparison  with  what  was  occurring  at  skirmish  at 
this  time  in  the  hilly  districts  of  northern  Bohemia.  Here  Gitschin- 
it  was  that  Benedek  had  decided  to  strike  a  blow  with 
his  full  and  undivided  forces  —  either  against  the  army  of 
Prince  Frederick  Charles,  which  was  advancing  from  the 
north  toward  the  Iser,  or,  as  the  case  might  be,  against 
that  of  the  Prussian  crown  prince,  which  was  moving 
westward  from  Silesia  over  the  Sudeten  Mountains,  and  in 
the  direction  of  the  Elbe.  The  Prussian  armies  —  that 
of  Frederick  Charles  had  been  joined  by  the  troops  with 
which  Herwarth  von  Bittenfeld  had  occupied  Dresden  — 
had  been  ordered  to  unite  in  the  neighborhood  of  Gitschin. 

It  remained  to  be  seen  whether  or  not  the  Austrians  could 
prevent  this  junction. 

Gitschin  forms  the  middle  point  of  the  irregular  quad¬ 
rangle  formed  by  the  bending  Elbe,  the  Sudeten,  and  the 
Iser.  It  was  in  this  quadrangle  that,  in  a  quick  succession 
of  conflicts,  the  fate  of  Germany  was  to  be  decided.  The 
first  fighting  took  place  at  Podol  and  Munchengratz, — 
points  on  the  Iser  which  had  been  reached,  separately,  by 
divisions  of  Frederick  Charles’s  and  of  Herwarth’s  armies. 

The  Austrians  were  worsted  in  both  skirmishes,  their  total 
losses  being  about  six  times  as  great  as  those  of  their 
antagonists. 

At  Gitschin  itself  a  deadly  struggle  took  place.  The 
Prussians  had  been  obliged  to  advance  between  towering 
and  wooded  heights,  which  were  crowned  by  the  batteries  of 


404 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  battle 
of  Konig- 
gratz. 


some  Austrian  divisions.  But  the  latter  were  hampered  by 
orders  from  headquarters,  which  reached  the  troops  after 
the  fighting  had  already  begun,  but  which  instructed  them 
to  avoid  a  contest  with  forces  numerically  greater  than 
their  own.  The  result  was  a  disastrous  retreat,  which 
ended  in  panic  and  confusion;  and  Frederick  Charles’s 
army  was  soon  in  possession  of  Gitsehin.  The  Prussian 
losses  amounted  to  fifteen  hundred,  the  Saxon- Austrian  to 
five  thousand  men. 

The  army  of  the  crown  prince,  meanwhile,  had  crossed 
the  Sudeten  Mountains  by  three  different  passes,  and  had 
met  with  serious  opposition.  N ear  Trautenau,  at  the  foot  of 
the  northernmost  pass,  the  Prussians  had  been  defeated,  — 
with  the  unusual  result,  indeed,  that  the  losses  of  the 
Austrians  were  three  times  as  great  as  their  own.  At 
Nachod,  Skalitz,  Burkersdorf,  and  Schweinschadel,  they 
had  been  successful.  Their  losses  during  the  whole  march 
had  amounted  to  about  five  thousand  men;  those  of  the 

Austrians,  to  twenty-one  thousand.  ^ 

By  the  30th  of  June  a  regiment  of  Frederick  Charles’s 

army  was  able  to  join  the  crown  prince  on  the  Elbe.  The 
first  great  task  of  the  Prussians,  that  of  uniting  all  their 
armies,  had  been  accomplished.  It  remained,  with  the  com¬ 
bined  forces,  to  deal  a  crushing  blow  to  the  enemy.  That 
blow  was  struck  between  Sadowa  and  Koniggratz  on  the 
3d  of  July.  King  William,  Bismarck,  Moltke,  and  Roon 
had  left  Berlin  four  days  before,  and  were  there  to  see  the 
result  of  all  their  plannings,  and  the  realization  of  all  their 

hopes. 

Koniggratz  is  one  of  the  great  battles  of  history,  not 
only  on  account  of  its  results,  but  also  because  of  its  actual 
operations.  Seldom  indeed  have  two  such  colossal  armies 
stood  over  against  each  other.  Two  hundred  and  twenty- 
two  thousand  men,  on  the  Austrian  side,  opposed  two 


1 


if 

- 

THE  RECKONING  WITH  AUSTRIA  405 

hundred  and  twenty-one  thousand  Prussians.  The  com¬ 
parative  discipline  of  the  two  armies,  as  well  as  the  actual 
condition  of  the  men  after  their  week  of  fighting  and  of 
long  marches,  was  very  different.  As  late  as  the  day  but 
one  before  the  battle,  Benedek  had  telegraphed  to  the 
emperor  at  Vienna:  “Most  earnestly  pray  your  Majesty 
to  make  peace  at  any  price  ;  catastrophe  for  army  unavoid¬ 
able.”  Francis  Joseph  had  answered:  u Impossible  to 
close  peace ;  I  command,  if  only  alternative,  to  begin  an 
orderly  retreat.  Has  a  battle  taken  place  ?  ”  On  the  after¬ 
noon  of  July  2  Benedek  had  telegraphed  again:  “The 
army  remains  to-morrow  in  its  position  near  Koniggratz. 
Rest  and  care  have  accomplished  much  ;  hope  that  further 
retreat  will  not  be  necessary.” 

The  Austrian  army  was  utterly  defeated  —  in  spite  of 
the  facts  that  its  position  on  the  low  hills,  which  it  had 
crowned  with  its  batteries,  was  an  exceptionally  strong 
one,  and  that  the  army  of  the  Prussian  crown  prince, 
which  had  remained  at  Koniginhof  not  knowing  that  the 
crisis  was  so  near,  had  had  to  march  from  ten  to  fifteen 
miles  on  the  very  day  of  the  battle.  Benedek’s  plan  of 
campaign  had  not  been  a  bad  one,  but  his  generals  —  chief 
among  them  those  scions  of  an  effete  nobility,  the  Counts 
of  Thun  and  Festetics  —  had  prevented  its  being  carried 
out.  They  had  imagined  that  they  themselves  knew  more 
than  their  commander,  and  had  disdained  to  obey  his 
orders.  The  brunt  of  the  attack  had  been  turned  against 
the  army  of  Frederick  Charles,  while  very  insufficient  forces 
had  remained  to  cope  with  that  of  the  crown  prince.  The 
divisions  which  Benedek  had  ordered  to  complete  the  chain 
that  would  have  blocked  the  latter’s  way,  engaged  instead 
with  Fransecky’s  division,  the  brave  resistance  of  which 
formed  the  most  heroic  episode  of  the  whole  battle.  Hour 
after  hour,  these  fourteen  thousand  men  resisted  the  attack 


406 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Horrors  at 
Koniggratz. 


The  inter¬ 
vention  of 
Napoleon. 


of  forty-three  thousand.  Hour  after  hour  with  but 
twenty-four  guns  they  resisted  the  fire  of  one  hundred 
and  twenty-eight.  By  the  time  the  long-looked-for  crown 
prince  arrived  every  seventh  man  had  fallen. 

The  crown  prince’s  appearance  decided  not  merely  the 
fate  of  this  one  encounter,  but  also  that  of  the  whole  day. 
Some  sixty  thousand  Austrians  were  soon  in  wild  flight  — 
only  to  be  overtaken  by  a  worse  fate  than  that  which  they 
were  striving  to  escape.  The  commandant  of  the  foi  tress 
had  closed  its  gates  and  opened  the  sluices  of  the  Elbe. 
From  the  one  narrow  way  that  led  to  these  inhospitable 
walls,  thousands  were  crowded  into  the  slimy  marshes. 
War  is  never  without  its  horrors ;  hut  there  is  something 
supremely  awful  in  the  idea  of  this  human  biidge  over 
which,  in  a  state  of  indescribable  panic,  passed  the  com¬ 
rades  of  the  fallen,  followed  by  horses,  cannon,  and  heavy 
wagons.  The  total  losses  of  the  defeated  army,  including 
the  prisoners  that  fell  into  Prussian  hands,  amounted  to 
44,393  men  —  a  terrible  chastening  for  any  responsible 
people.  Yet  the  light-hearted  Viennese  seem  scarcely  to 
have  felt  the  blow.  The  theatres  continued  their  perform¬ 
ances,  and  Strauss’s  concerts  were  well  attended.  A  reliable 
witness  relates  how,  on  the  very  day  on  which  the  news  of 
the  battle  arrived,  some  two  thousand  persons  took  part  in 
a  masked  festival,  a  sort  of  Venetian  Corso,  and  how,  in  the 
cafes ,  the  public  applauded  and  encored  the  little  scenes 
and  chansonettes.  “  I  asked  myself,”  he  writes,  “  if  I  had 
been  only  dreaming  and  if  we  had  really  received  a  bloody 
and  signal  defeat.  Will  not  fire  and  shame  descend 

upon  us  ? ” 

Two  days  after  Koniggratz,  on  the  5th  of  July,  the 
Paris  Moniteur  announced  to  the  world  that  Austria  had 
ceded  Venice  to  the  French  emperor,  and  had  asked  him 
to  mediate  between  the  warring  powers.  Napoleon  had 


THE  RECKONING  WITH  AUSTRIA 


40T 


taken  upon  himself  a  difficult  office,  —  the  more  so  as  he  had 
to  reckon  with  fundamental  differences  of  opinion  in  his 
own  cabinet.  The  minister  of  foreign  affairs,  Drouyn  de 
Lhuys,  was  in  favor  of  intimidating  the  Prussians,  and  pre¬ 
venting  them  from  placing  their  demands  too  high,  by 
stationing  an  army  of  a  hundred  thousand  men  on  the 
eastern  frontier.  Marquis  Lavalette,  minister  of  the  in¬ 
terior,  declared  that  a  mediator  neither  commands  nor 
threatens ;  and  that,  besides,  France  was  in  no  condition  to 
go  to  war.  Prussia  accepted  Napoleon’s  intervention,  but 
kept  him  on  tenter-hooks  before  stating  the  terms  on 
which  she  would  make  peace. 


r 


Italy,  on  the  contrary,  hitherto  a  mere  fledgling  under 
Napoleon  s  wing,  refused  the  overtures  of  her  former  pat¬ 
ron,  who  was  ready,  now,  to  buy  her  over  at  any  moment 
for  the  price  of  Venice.  Italian  pride  rebelled  at  receiv- 
ing,  as  a  gift,  what  the  country’s  weapons  had  failed  to  win. 
“  I  will  never,”  cried  one  of  the  ministers,  “  consent  to 
such  a  piece  of  ‘piggery.’”  Victor  Emmanuel  ordered 
General  Cialdini,  whose  army  had  remained  inactive  as  yet, 
to  cross  the  Po  into  Venetian  territory.  He  did  so,  and 
Garibaldi  broke  into  the  Tyrol;  while  the  forces  of  the 
Italian  fleet  engaged  with  those  of  the  Austrian  admiral, 
Tegethoff,  on  the  heights  above  Lissa.  But  Lissa,  on 
a  smaller  scale,  was  a  repetition  of  Custozza,  Admiral 
Persano  proving  a  worthy  disciple  of  La  Marmora.  The 
second  Italian  campaign  was  as  inglorious  as  the  first 
had  been. 

The  delay  of  Prussia,  meanwhile,  in  stating  the  condi¬ 
tions  of  a  possible  peace,  began  to  make  the  French  em¬ 
peror  ridiculous  in  the  eyes  of  Europe.  It  seemed  as 
though  Bismarck  intended  to  dally  with  the  would-be 
arbiter  until  the  Prussian  army  should  have  reached 
Vienna.  Napoleon  could  not  even  bring  about  a  tempo- 


408 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


rary  truce;  and,  on  June  16,  a  skirmish  took  place  at 
Tobitschau,  on  June  22,  another  at  Blumenau. 

The  credit  of  having  prevented  Napoleon  from  raising 
an  army,  and  from  breaking  with  Italy  and  Prussia,  belongs 
to  the  Prussian  ambassador  in  Paris,  Count  Goltz.  Goltz 
held  a  discourse  before  the  Empress  Eugenie  on  the  gen¬ 
eral  state  of  things  in  Europe.  He  pointed  out  that  the 
English  government  was  momentarily  friendly  to  Ger¬ 
many  ;  that  Russia  still  remembered  the  support  furnished 
by  Napoleon  to  Poland ;  and  that  Austria  had  never  for¬ 
given  the  emperor  for  aiding  to  free  Italy.  He  ended  by 
asking  the  empress  if  this  were  a  time  to  mortally  wound 
King  William’s  just  pride  of  victory,  or  to  tamper  with 
Italy.  The  ambassador’s  representations  seem  to  have 
been  effectual.  Napoleon  adopted  a  milder  tone,  and, 
when  the  Prussian  proposals  had  finally  arrived,  and  been 
formulated  and  laid  before  him  by  Goltz,  he  was  graciously 
pleased  to  approve  them,  —  adding  for  his  own  part  this  one 
paragraph:  “Austria’s  integrity,  save  as  regards  Venice, 
shall  be  preserved.”  This  coincided  well  with  Bismarck’s 
views.  On  the  day  of  Koniggratz,  as  he  rode  over  the  bat¬ 
tlefield  with  King  William,  who  made  light  of  the  stray 
bullets  that  were  falling  about  him,  he  had  said  to  his 
sovereign :  “  The  question  at  issue  is  decided ;  what  now 
is  at  stake  is  to  regain  the  old  friendship  with  Austria.” 
Truce  of  The  proposals  submitted  to  Napoleon,  and  adopted  as  a 
Nikolsburg  basis  of  peace,  r^njbhat  Austria  should  recognize  the  disso- 
aiid  Treaty  lution  0f  the  old  German  Confederation,  and  not  oppose  a 
°L^a^ue  reorganization  of  Germany  in  which  she  should  have  no 
part ;  that  Prussia  should  form  a  North  German  Confed¬ 
eration,  and  not  oppose  a  similar  union  of  the  South  Ger¬ 
man  states ;  that  Austria  and  her  allies  should  make  good 
the  costs  —  or,  as  Napoleon  emended  it,  a  part  of  the  costs 
_ of  the  war  ;  that  Schleswig-Holstein,  with  the  possible 


I  1 

li 

si  \ 

THE  RECKONING  WITH  AUSTRIA  409 

exception  of  the  northern  districts  of  Schleswig,  should  be 
incorporated  in  Prussia.  Goltz  had  omitted  to  mention 
one  chief  item,  and  Bismarck  telegraphed  to  him  on  June 
17 :  “  The  most  important  thing  for  us  at  the  present 
moment  is  the  annexation  of  from  three  to  four  million 
North  German  inhabitants.”  Fortunately  for  the  cause 
of  peace,  Napoleon,  who  had  his  own  ulterior  motives, 
showed  himself  tractable  as  to  this  point  also.  He  de¬ 
clared  that  the  desired  annexations  were  details,  indiffer¬ 
ent  to  him,  of  the  inner  German  organization.  He  entered 
the  lists,  however,  for  the  kingdom  of  Saxony,  begging 
that  it  should  be  allowed  to  remain  intact.  The  Saxons 
had  been  the  chief  allies  of  the  Austrians,  and  it  was  a 
point  of  honor  with  the  latter  that  the  country  should  not 
be  dismembered. 

The  preliminary  Peace  of  Nikolsburg  was  concluded  on 
June  26,  on  the  basis  of  the  proposals  approved  by  Na¬ 
poleon.  The  final  one,  in  which  Italy  was  included,  was 
signed,  two  months  later,  at  Prague.  At  Nikolsburg,  a 
strong  difference  of  opinion  had  shown  itself  between  Bis¬ 
marck  and  the  king  of  Prussia.  The  latter  wanted  to 
make  the  most  of  his  victory,  and  to  annex  at  least  two 
Saxon  provinces.  Bismarck’s  stern  insistence  on  the  ne¬ 
cessity  for  moderation  was,  as  even  his  enemies  acknowl¬ 
edge,  one  of  his  greatest  acts.  He  pointed  out  that  the 
present  moment  was  the  time  for  peace ;  that  clouds  were 
rising  on  the  political  horizon ;  that  the  desire  to  gain  a 
little  more  should  not  tempt  Prussia  to  jeopardize  the  re¬ 
sults  already  won.  Bismarck  tells  himself,  in  his  memoirs, 
how,  during  the  interview  with  the  king  on  the  subject, 
the  latter  became  so  excited  that  it  was  necessary  to  drop 
the  discussion ;  how,  under  the  impression  that  his  views 
had  been  rejected,  he  had  asked  permission  to  abandon  a 
diplomatic  career,  and  had  retired  to  his  own  room ;  how 


Bismarck 

saves 

Saxony. 


France 
wants  com¬ 
pensation. 


410  A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

the  thought  had  come  to  him  of  ending  all  his  troubles  by 
falling  from  a  fourth  story- window,  —  when  he  heard  the 
door  open  and  a  hand  was  laid  upon  his  shoulder.  It  was 
the  crown  prince,  who,  knightly  and  frank  in  all  his  acts, 
had  come  to  offer  him  his  alliance.  “You  know  that  I 
have  always  been  against  the  war,  he  said.  “You  have 
considered  it  necessary,  and  for  it  you  bear  the  responsi¬ 
bility.  If  now  you  are  convinced  that  the  purpose  has 
been  achieved,  and  that  peace  ought  to  be  concluded,  I 
am  ready  to  stand  by  you,  and  defend  your  opinion 
against  my  father.”  The  old  king  eventually  lelented, 
but  not  without  a  final  thrust  at  the  minister  who  had 
deserted  him  before  the  enemy,  and  forced  him  to  “  bite 
into  the  sour  apple  ”  and  sign  this  “  disgraceful  peace. 

Bismarck  had  conquered.  Saxony  remained  intact,  and 
jomecTThe  Nortin&erman  Confederation.  Austria’s  in¬ 
demnity  was  reduced  from  fifty  million  thalers  to  less 
than  half  that  amount.  On  the  day  on  which  the  prelim¬ 
inaries  of  Nikolsburg  were  signed,  the  French  ambassador, 
Benedetti,  laid  before  Bismarck  a  despatch  from  Paris. 
France  had  desired  not  to  disturb  the  negotiations ;  but, 
these  being  now  ended,  would  like  to  have  it  known,  that 
her  consent  to  the  Prussian  annexations  presupposed  a 
moderate  compensation  for  herself.  What  that  compen¬ 
sation  should  comprise  was  to  be  the  subject  for  future 
deliberations. 

U 


CHAPTER  X 


THE  BECKONING  WITH  FBANCE  AND  THE  ATTAINMENT 

OF  GERMAN  UNITY 


t 


* 


i 

if 

i 

r 


) 


\ 


( 


i 


i 


Literature  :  See  under  previous  chapter.  Of  works  dealing  with  the 
military  events  of  the  Franco-Prussian  war  that  of  Junck,  Der  deutsch- 
franzdsischer  Krieg  is  one  of  the  best.  Sybel  gives  only  the  genesis  of 
the  war.  The  letters  of  the  Times  correspondent,  gathered  into  two 
volumes  under  the  title  of  International  Belations  before  and  during  the 
War  of  1870 ,  are  extremely  interesting  reading.  These  Times  corre¬ 
spondents  were  frequently  furnished  with  their  information  by  Bismarck 
himself.  Count  Frankenberg’s  Krieg  stag  eblatter  are  exceptionally  vivid 
war  pictures  written  from  day  to  day. 


The  events  that  culminated  in  the  battle  of  Koniggratz 
and  the  fall  of  the  old  German  Confederation,  had  served 
also  to  clear  the  storm-laden  atmosphere  in  other  direc¬ 
tions.  King  William  and  Bismarck  were  no  longer  the 
most  unpopular  men  in  the  kingdom  ;  for,  from  the  moment 
that  war  became  imminent,  the  tide  had  begun  to  turn.  An 
attempt  on  the  minister’s  life  by  a  fanatic,  who  thought 
thus  to  prevent  the  struggle,  and  who,  on  Unter  den  Lin¬ 
den,  fired  five  shots  at  him,  gave  rise  to  an  address  signed 
by  three  hundred  thousand  names.  Bismarck’s  coolness  after 
the  event,  in  entertaining  invited  guests  as  if  nothing  had 
happened,  and  in  only  casually  informing  his  wife  in  an 
undertone  of  the  danger  he  had  escaped,  excited  general 
admiration.  The  return  of  the  king  from  the  battlefield 
—  and  especially  his  first  appearance  at  a  state  performance 
in  the  opera  house  —  was  the  occasion  of  such  an  ovation 
that,  when  William  rose  to  make  his  acknowledgments,  tears 

411 


Growing 
popularity 
of  William 
and  Bis¬ 
marck. 


412 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  end  of 
the  struggle 
with  the 
Prussian 
Parliament. 


choked  his  voice  and  he  was  forced  to  retire.  The  elite  of 
Berlin  gave  a  festival  at  Kroll’s  famous  establishment  in 
the  Thiergarten,  in  the  course  of  which,  the  burgomaster 
of  the  city  drank  a  toast  to :  “  Bismarck,  who  had  taken 
time  by  the  forelock,  and  with  unflinching  resolution 
realized  the  yearnings  of  his  race  for  unity ;  Roon,  who 
had  organized  the  army  that  shattered  the  enemy ;  and 
Moltke,  the  unseen  moving  spring  of  all  those  splendid 

operations.” 

It  still  remained  to  hold  a  final  reckoning  with  the  Prus¬ 
sian  Parliament ;  but  so  bent  was  Bismarck  on  conciliation, 
so  completely  did  he  throw  aside  every  idea  of  humbling 
his  former  adversaries,  that  the  matter  was  soon  arranged. 
In  his  first  speech  from  the  throne  to  the  two  Houses  of  the 
Prussian  Parliament,  the  king  confessed  that  the  govern¬ 
ment  had  been  obliged  for  some  years  to  carry  on  the  finan¬ 
cial  affairs  of  the  state  without  the  proper  basis.  This  had 
been  done,  however,  from  a  supreme  sense  of  duty,  and 
William  now  demanded  indemnification  for  his  acts.  In  its 
reply,  the  House  of  Deputies  was  very  outspoken,  hoped  that 
henceforth  there  would  always  be  a  timely  enactment  of 
the  budget,  and  that  moneys  refused  by  the  House  would 
not  be  expended  under  pretence  of  being  required  for  the 
public  weal.  The  king  answered  that  he  was  ready  to 
admit  that  the  case  was  unique  of  its  kind.  W ere  a  similar 
emergency  possible,  he  knew  of  no  other  expedient  that 
could  well  be  adopted,  but  the  like  never  could  occur 
again.  In  his  great  speech  of  defence,  Bismarck  warned 
against  demanding  a  too  specific  acknowledgment  of  wrong¬ 
doing,  and  declared  that  his  party  required  peace,  not 
because  it  had  been  rendered  unfit  for  combat,  but  because 
the  great  task  was  not  yet  finished,  and  the  fatherland 
needed  unity  in  word  and  deed.  The  act  of  indemnity 
was  passed  by  230  out  of  305  votes ;  and,  as  a  mark  of 


] 

>\ . 

THE  RECKONING  WITH  FRANCE  413 

especial  esteem,  the  sum  of  a  million  and  a  half  thalers 
was  set  aside  as  a  dotation  for  those  who  had  most  dis¬ 
tinguished  themselves  in  bringing  about  such  great  re¬ 
sults.  Bismarck  received  four  hundred  thousand,  Roon 
three  hundred  thousand,  and  Moltke  two  hundred  thou¬ 
sand  thalers,  with  the  recommendation  that  the  money  be 
expended  in  buying  landed  estates. 

By  the  addition  of  ^Schleswig-Holstein,  Hanover,  Hesse- 
Cassel,  Nassau,  and  Frankfort,  Prussia  received  an  increase 

i— . . . 

of  four  and  a  half  million  population  and  of  more  than  five 
thousand  square  miles  of  territory.  The  small  states  that 
were  now  received  into  the  North  German  Confederation 
added  a  further  four  million  inhabitants  to  that  organiza¬ 
tion,  and  raised  the  numbers  of  the  army  at  its  disposal 
to  some  eight  hundred  thousand  men.  As  a  rule  the 
annexations  were  accomplished  without  difficulty;  but,  in 
Hanover,  the  king  carried  away  all  the  state  funds  he 
could  lay  hands  on,  and  the  nobility  presented  a  pathetic 
address,  asking  that  the  dynasty  which  had  ruled  for 
so  many  centuries  should  not  be  driven  out.  William 
answered  this  address  at  great  length,  and  the  deputa¬ 
tion  departed  in  soitoav  and  sadness  :  “henceforward,”  it 
declared,  “  the  most  loyal  and  reasonable  Hanoverian  has 
no  other  resource  but  to  endeavor  to  convert  the  bitter¬ 
ness  and  excitement,  partly  created  by  the  intention  of 
annexation,  into  a  sentiment  of  hopeless  resignation  to 
the  unavoidable  decrees  of  Providence.”  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  far  from  showing  “hopeless  resignation,”  the 
Guelph  king  and  his  son  proved  such  a  thorn  in  the  side 
of  the  Prussian  government,  and  went  so  far  in  their 
hostility,  that  an  indemnity  originally  granted  them  was 
withdrawn.  For  many  years,  their  revenues  went  to 
make  up  the  so-called  “  reptile  fund  ”  which  was  secretly 
used  to  suppress  intrigues  against  the  safety  of  the  state. 


Sorrow  of 
the  Hano¬ 
verians. 


414 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  consti¬ 
tution  of 
the  North 
German 
Confedera¬ 
tion. 


“  We  must  follow  these  reptiles  into  their  holes,”  Bismarck 
had  said,  in  his  virile  way. 

It  remained  to  draw  up  a  constitution  for  the  North 
German  Confederation ;  and  this,  as  far  as  the  essential 
points  were  concerned,  Bismarck  did  with  his  own  hand. 

It  was  he  who  invented  the  name  Bundesrath  for  the 
federal  council  that  was  to  represegtjbheintfirests  of  the 
individual  states:  as  opposed  to  t  h  which  was 

the  organ"  lor  the  ydiole  confederation,  and  the  members 
of  which~ were^chosen  merely  on"a  numerical  Imsis  —  one 
for  each  hundred  thousand  of  the  population.  The  states 
retamecT the  utmost  freedomTsave  where  the  general  good 
absolutely  demanded  a  sacrifice.  The  pr&sid&njh  .of  the 
confede^atkia».^vas  the  king  of  Prussia,  who,  however,  ^ 
had  no  initiative m  introducing  laws,  and  no^veto  power. 

To  the^Gireafof  sohie '  progresd'onist  memKeSof  the 
first  general  Parliament,  that  the  constitution  must  be 
made  to  conform  to  the  less  liberal  one  of  Prussia,  or  that 
otherwise  the  Prussian  Diet  might  refuse*  to  accept  it, 
Bismarck  replied  with  overwhelming  eloquence:  udid  the 
opposition  really  believe  that  the  movement  which  had 
called  men  to  arms  from  the  Belt  to  the  Sicilian  Straits, 
from  the  Rhine  to  the  Pruth  and  Dniester,  was  to  have 
no  result;  and  that  the  million  German  warriors  who  had 
fought  and  bled  on  distant  battlefields  could  be  deprived 
of  the  benefit  of  this  national  decision  by  the  vote  of  a 
local  Diet  ?  What !  he  cried,  would  these  gentlemen 
answer  to  a  wounded  soldier  of  Koniggratz,  asking  what 
he  had  achieved  by  all  his  sufferings  ?  Oh,  yes,  —  they 
would  say,  —  again  nothing  has  come  of  German  unity,  but 
we  have  saved  the  right  of  the  Prussian  Diet  to  render 
doubtful  every  year  the  existence  of  the  Prussian  army. 

“  And  herewith,”  he  thundered  in  conclusion,  “  shall  the 
wounded  soldier  console  himself  that  he  has  lost  his  limbs, 


THE  RECKONING  WITH  FRANCE  415 


I 

f 


herewith  the  widow  that  she  has  buried  her  husband?” 
He  constantly  urged  to  haste.  “  Set  Germany  in  the  sad¬ 
dle,”  he  cried  ;  “  she  wrill  soon  know  how  to  ride.”  After 
less  than  two  months  of  deliberation,  the  constitution  was 
finally  adopted;  and,  already  in  the  autumn  of  1867,  the 
first  regular  Diet  was  held.  ^ 

It  was  a  grief  to  Bismarck,  a  grief  to  the  states  them¬ 
selves,  that  Bavaria,  Baden,  and  Wiirtemberg,  and  their 
satellites,  had  been  excluded  from  the  Confederation.  But 
during  all  these  years  a  strong  factor  to  be  reckoned  with 
was  the  possible  enmity  of  Napoleon  III.  At  the  time  of 
the  Peace  of  Prague,  he  had  laid  down  his  fiat  that  these 
southern  states  should  be  allowed  to  form  their  own  union. 
So  shaken  was  the  emperor’s  own  position  by  the  fiasco  in 
Mexico,  that  he  was  considered  ready  to  take  up  any 
quarrel  that  might  restore  his  lost  prestige.  He  hoped  to 
exercise  great  influence  over  this  second  confederation,  — 
which,  indeed,  he  was  never  able  to  bring  to  pass.  He 
had  not  counted  on  the  strength  of  the  commercial  ties 
that  bound  north  and  south  together  :  with  the  Prussian 
market  closed  to  Bavarian  beer,  the  wholesale  price  had 
fallen  to  nearly  one-half.  The  southern  states  were  glad 
enough  to  enter  the  Zollverein ,  and  even  to  relinquish  the 
veto  power  in  that  organization,  which  each  member  had 
formerly  possessed.  They  were  glad  enough  to  enter  into 
secret  treaties  with  Prussia,  offensive  as  well  as  defensive, 
the  publishing  of  which,  in  1867,  completely  checkmated 
Napoleon. 

The  French  emperor’s  efforts  to  gain  compensation  were 
like  the  grasping  at  a  straw  of  a  drowning  man.  He 
hinted,  he  threatened,  he  implored.  Bismarck,  when  it 
suited  his  purposes,  would  encourage  him  with  a  ray  of 
hope.  In  the  summer  of  1866  Napoleon  made  a  specific 
demand  of  the  left  bank  of  the  Rhine,  including  Mainz : 


Treaties  of 
Prussia 
with  the 
southern 
states. 


Napoleon’s 
craving  for 
compensa¬ 
tion. 


416 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The 

Luxemburg 

question. 


his  envoy,  Benedetti,  declared  that  could  public  opinion 
in  France  not  be  placated  by  such  a  concession  the  exist¬ 
ence  of  the  dynasty  would  be  in  danger.  Part  of  the 
territory  demanded  belonged  to  Bavaria,  and  Bismaick 
used  this  circumstance  to  thoroughly  embroils  the  emperor 
with  the  southern  states.  The  chancellor’s  curt  refusal 
to  cede  an  inch  of  German  territory,  led  to  the  fall  of 
M.  Drouyn  de  Lhuys,  and  to  a  disavowal  of  his  policy,  but 
not  to  a  relinquishment  of  the  hope  of  compensation.  The 
emperor’s  star  was  waning  fast.  After  his  abandonment  of 
the  unfortunate  Maximilian,  the  latter  had  been  captuied, 
court-martialled,  and  shot,  —  to  the  lasting  disgrace  of  the 
French  government.  The  role  which  Napoleon  j^s ^playing 
in  European  politics  was  becoming  farcical.  The  rapidity 
with  which  Prussia  had  crushed  Austria  had  upset  all  his 
calculations.  The  French  looked  upon  Koniggratz  as  a 
defeat,  almost,  of  their  own  arms,  and  called  loudly  for 
revenge  ;  and  no  amount  of  stuffing  the  ballot  could  pre¬ 
vent  the  rise  of  a  strong  parliamentary  opposition  at  home. 

For  a  moment  it  seemed  as  though,  by  purchasing  Lux¬ 
emburg  from  Holland,  Napoleon  could  throw  a  sop  to  his 
detractors.  Luxemburg  was  practically  German,  although 
it  had  refused  to  enter  the  North  German  Confederation. 
The  king  of  Holland  was  willing  to  sell.  Bismarck,  at 
first  at  least,  seems  not  to  have  been  averse  to  the  trans¬ 
action.  But  Russia  and  England  interfered,  and  among 
the  German  people  at  large  there  arose  a  perfect  storm  of 
opposition.  The  member  from  Hanover,  Bennigsen,  de¬ 
nounced  the  project  in  the  federal  Parliament  in  most  scath¬ 
ing  terms.  44  Luxemburg,”  he  declared,  44  is  German,  and 
has  given  emperors  and  margraves  to  the  nation.  It  is  a 
border  country,  the  defence  and  preservation  of  which  is 
a  demand  of  honor.  It  is  a  fortress  of  extreme  military 
importance,  the  loss  of  which  would  not  a  little  impair 


THE  RECKONING  WITH  FRANCE  417 

our  strength.  ...  If  France  does  not  hesitate  to  insult 
us,  the  earlier  that  we  say  that  we  are  all  for  war  the 
better.  It  would  be  sullying  our  honor  were  we  to  act 
otherwise.  It  would  be  an  indelible  stain  on  the  national 
escutcheon,  were  we  to  submit  to  arrogance  and  cupidity 
combined.”  And  to  war  it  all  but  came :  there  were 
moments  when  the  mobilizing  of  the  German  forces  hung 
on  the  turn  of  a  hand.  Bismarck,  when  asked  later  what 
had  held  him  back,  acknowledged  that  for  a  week  the  matter 
had  occupied  his  whole  attention.  “  It  was  not  the  pos¬ 
sibility  of  defeat  that  concerned  me,”  he  declared,  “for 
Moltke  had  assured  me  we  should  conquer.  But  it  was  a 
question  whether  we  wish  to  begin  war  with  France,  even 
with  the  certainty  or  extreme  probability  of  victory. 
This  question  we  answered  in  the  negative,  and  deter¬ 
mined  only  to  make  war  under  absolute  compulsion.  We 
considered  all  the  immense  losses,  all  the  grief  and  misery 
in  thousands  of  families.  Yes,  gentlemen,  stare  at  me  if 
you  will,  do  you  think  that  I,  too,  have  not  a  heart  ?  Be¬ 
lieve  me,  I  have  one  that  beats  just  like  your  own.  War 
will  always  be  war  —  the  misery  of  the  devastated  lands, 
the  wails  of  the  widows  and  orphans  —  it  is  all  so  terrible 
that  I  for  one  would  only  grasp  at  this  expedient  under 
supreme  necessity.” 

Although  the  Luxemburg  matter  was  settled  peaceably, 
its  sting  remained  behind.  “  The  Prussians  need  not  be 
the  most  suspicious  of  men,”  wrote  the  correspondent  of 
the  London  Times ,  “  to  regard  this  Luxemburg  bargain  as 
the  shadow  of  coming  events.  If  Napoleon  III.  deem  it 
conducive  to  the  interests  of  his  dynasty  to  satisfy  the  in¬ 
ordinate  ambition  of  the  French,  the  rebuff  he  sustained 
in  the  present  affair  will  only  render  it  the  more  indis¬ 
pensable  for  him  to  engage  in  some  similar  venture  as 
soon  as  he  can.”  Numberless  were  the  hostile  acts  com- 


French 
jealousy  of 
Prussia. 


YOL.  II — 2  E 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Bismarck 
and  the 
Spanish 
candida¬ 
ture. 


m 

mitted  by  the  French  during  the  next  two  years.  Unre¬ 
mittingly  the  press  egged  its  readers  on  to  war.  The 
official  Moniteur  once  described  the  Prussian  soldier  as 
the  44  pitiable  slave  of  a  despotic  government,”  and  said  of 
General  Benedek  and  his  defeat  at  Koniggratz,  44  This 
proves  him  to  have  been  even  a  worse  ignoramus  than  the 
Prussians,  his  adversaries.”  A  pamphlet  issued  in  May, 
1868,  speaks  of  war  as  sure  to  come,  but  expresses  the 
condescending  hope  that  Prussia’s  conquerors  would  not 
abuse  their  victory  as  they  did  after  Jena,  for  44  it  is  never 
good  to  drive  a  courageous  people  to  despair.  Napoleon 
III.  was  repeatedly  saluted  by  his  troops  with  shouts  of 
“Au  Rhin!”  and  44  Vive  la  guerre /”  while  the  Hanoverian 
Legion,  with  which  King  George  hoped  to  recover  his 
lost  dominions,  was  invited  to  France  and  allowed  to 
muster  and  drill  on  French  soil. 

But  ^11  these  menaces  were  without  a  focus  until,  in  the 
autumn  of  1869,  it  became  known  that  the  Spaniards  had 
offered  their  throne,  rendered  vacant  by  revolution,  to 
Prince  Leopold,  of  the  Sigmaringen  branch  of  the  House 
of  Hohenzollern  —  a  very  distant  relative  of  the  king  of 
Prussia,  it  is  true  ;  indeed,  an  actually  nearer  one  to  Na¬ 
poleon  himself,  and  a  Roman  Catholic  to  boot — but  he 
bore  the  hated  name,  and  the  cry  was  raised  to  beware  of 
the  new  Charles  V.  on  his  double  throne.  Behind  this 
Spanish  candidature  there  was  suspected  a  wile  of  Bis¬ 
marck’s,  as  to  some  extent  was  the  case.  The  minister, 
in  view  of  France’s  constant  hostility,  was  glad  to  have  a 
friendly  prince  in  her  rear.  He  egged  on  the  Hohenzol- 
lerns  with  the  whole  weight  of  his  influence,  knowing 
that  the  choice  would  not  be  agreeable  to  the  French  gov¬ 
ernment.  He  urged  secrecy  to  the  last  moment,  intending 
to  prepare  a  blow  for  Napoleon.  But,  with  all  this,  he 
never  once  placed  himself  formally  in  the  wrong,  and  the 


1 

r 

>r 

THE  RECKONING  WITH  FRANCE  419 

final  renunciation  of  the  throne  of  Spain  by  the  Prince  of 
Hohenzollern  freed  him  from  all  responsibility.  All  the 
aggression,  all  the  clumsy  blundering,  was  done  for  him 
by  the  other  side  ;  and  the  French  ministry  must  ever 
stand  before  the  world’s  judgment-seat  as  haying  entered 
into  a  bloody  struggle  on  grounds  of  the  most  unhallowed 
frivolity,  vThe  ultimate  cause  of  the  Franco-Prussian 
war  was  French  jealousy  of  German  unity)  Vjffie  imme¬ 
diate  provocation  was  an  insult  to  the  Prussian  king,  at 
the  news  of  which,  as  imparted  in  Bismarck’s  sharp,  con¬ 
cise  language,  the  whole  of  Germany,  north  as  well  as 
south,  rose  as  a  single  man: 

At  a  time  when  the  political  horizon  seemed  perfectly 
clear,  and  the  high  world  of  Germany  had  dispersed  to 
the  springs  and  the  seashore  for  the  summer,  a  perfect 
bomb  exploded  in  the  nature  of  a  telegram  from  Ems, 
where  the  king  was  taking  the  waters.  This  was  pub¬ 
lished  in  the  North  German  Allgemeine  Zeitung.  It  ran 
as  follows:  “After  the  news  of  the  renunciation  of  the 
hereditary  Prince  of  Hohenzollern  had  been  officially  an¬ 
nounced  by  the  royal  Spanish  to  the  imperial  French 
government,  the  French  ambassador  made  the  further  de¬ 
mand  on  his  Majesty,  the  king,  in  Ems,  that  he  should 
authorize  him  to  telegraph  to  Paris  that  his  Majesty,  the 
king,  would  bind  himself  for  all  future  time  never  again 
to  give  his  consent  should  the  Hohenzollerns  revert  to 
their  candidature.  His  Majesty,  the  king,  thereupon  re¬ 
fused  to  receive  the  French  ambassador  again,  and  caused 
his  aide-de-camp  to  say  that  his  Majesty  had  nothing  fur¬ 
ther  to  impart  to  the  ambassador.” 

There  is  little  doubt  but  that,  had  this  telegram  been 
worded  differently,  the  Franco-German  struggle  might 
have  been  postponed.  It  might,  too,  have  turned  out  less 
advantageously  for  Prussia.  It  was  all  true  what  the  tele- 


The 
famous 
telegram 
from  Ems. 


420 


What  really 
happened 
at  Ems. 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

gram  stated,  yet  the  impression  given  was  a  false  one. 
As  it  stood,  it  seemed  to  verify  the  report  that  Benedetti 
had  come  with  instructions  to  brusquer  le  roi ;  that  he 
had  invaded  the  privacy  of  the  promenade;  that  the  king 
had  turned  his  hack  — “shown  him  the  door,  as  the 

French  ministry  figuratively  put  it. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  had  been,  not  one,  but  three, 
interviews,  and  all  polite  forms  had  been  observed.  Ben¬ 
edetti  seems  to  have  acquitted  himself  of  his  first  instruc¬ 
tions,— that  he  should  demand  of  the  king  to  order  t  e 
Hohenzollern  prince  to  revoke  his  acceptance  o  e 
crown, _ with  skill  and  moderation.  William  had  dis¬ 

claimed  the  right,  as  king  of  Prussia,  to  issue  any  sue 
order,  having  merely  given  his  consent  as  head  of  tie 
family.  He  had  told  Benedetti,  however,  that  he  was  ex¬ 
pecting  a  despatch  from  Sigmaringen,  and  had  made  it 
clear  enough  what  he  hoped  that  despatch  would  contain. 
He  would  not  abandon  the  standpoint  that  the  Sigmaringen 
branch  of  the  family  were  acting  on  their  own  responsi¬ 
bility.  Yet  it  was  doubtless  his  doing  that  the  renuncia¬ 
tion  was  made,  and  that  it  was  announced  in  Paris  earlier 
than  in  Ems.  Nor  did  he  hesitate  to  express  his  full  and 
frank  approval  of  what  had  occurred.  At  the  next  in¬ 
terview,  on  the  morning  of  July  13,  Benedetti, -instructed 
by  wild,  impatient  telegrams  from  the  French  minister, 
Gramont,  who  felt  that  his  place  depended  on  subservi¬ 
ency  to  the  party  of  war,  — had  brought  forward  the  de¬ 
mand,  that  the  king  should  bind  himself  for  all  future 
time.  William  had  refused,  but,  far  from  turning  his 
back,  still  arranged  with  the  French  envoy  that,  when  the 
Sigmaringen  letter  arrived,  he  would  communicate  to  him 
its  contents.  This  he  had  done  in  the  course  of  a  few  hours, 
—  but  through  an  adjutant,  not  personally,  —  declaring 
that,  as  the  prince  had  resigned,  the  affair  was  to  be  con- 


THE  RECKONING  WITH  FRANCE 


421 


1 

•f 


sideied  closed.  Twice,  after  this,  Benedetti  had  demanded 
an  audience  in  the  matter  of  the  future  guarantee,  but 
had  been  told  that  his  Majesty  must  refuse  utterly  to  dis¬ 
cuss  this  latter  point.  In  the  matter  of  personal  relations 
there  was  no  breach.  Benedetti  came  to  the  station  on 
the  following  day  to  pay  his  respects  to  the  king,  who 
was  departing  for  Coblenz,  and  who  received  him  politely. 

In  the  meantime  there  had  come,  through  the  Prussian 
minister  in  Paris,  Werther,  a  demand  of  Gramont’s 
that  shows  the  whole  madness  and  thirst  for  war  of  the 
French  government.  The  ministers  desired  the  king’s 
signature  to  what  amounted  to  a  formal  letter  of  apology 
for  ever  having  sanctioned  the  candidature  of  Leopold: 
it  was  to  be  clearly  stated  that  no  offence  had  been  in¬ 
tended  to  the  French  people.  William  was  beside  him¬ 
self  with  anger.  But  already  matters  had  gone  over  into 
other  hands,  for,  in  the  course  of  the  afternoon,  he  had 
caused  an  official  of  the  Foreign  Office,  Abeken,  to  tele¬ 
graph  to  Bismarck  an  account  of  the  whole  proceed¬ 
ings  with  Benedetti,  with  instructions  to  use  the  despatch 
as  he  saw  fit.  He  saw  fit,  as  we  have  seen,  to  reedit 
Abeken’s  too  benevolent  and  lengthy  statement,  shorten¬ 
ing  it,  rendering  it  much  more  terse,  and  making  out  of 
it,  according  to  Moltke’s  approving  dictum,  a  fanfare ,  or 
signal  for  attack,  rather  than  a  cliamade ,  or  signal  for 
parley. 

Bismarck  had  been  infuriated  by  the  whole  Benedetti  Bismarck’s 
episode.  From  the  beginning  he  had  found  the  king’s  atti-  sending  of 
|  tude  too  yielding.  This  was  a  question  for  diplomatic  in-  the  tele' 

I  tercourse,  not  for  private  and  informal  interviews.  When  resident 
the  Prince  of  Hohenzollern  renounced  the  throne,  Bismarck  envoys, 
considered  it  such  a  blow  to  Prussia  that  he  spoke  of  hand- 
i  ing  in  his  own  resignation.  He  purposely  made  the  Ems 
telegram  as  decisive  as  he  could,  and  took  the  further 


422 


into  war. 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

step  of  sending  a  copy  of  it  to  consuls  and  resident  en- 
voys  at  the  different  German  capitals. 

The  French  It  was  this  last  act,  as  misrepresented  by  the  Fren0  §  ' 

are  hurried  eminent,  that  roused  the  excitement  of  the  I  rench  C 

-  her  to  a  white  heat,  and  drove  it  into  a  formal  declarat  on 

of  war.  The  Prussian  king  had  refused  to  leceive 
French  ambassador,  declared  Olivier.  If  such  refusal 
were  harmless  and  innocent,  why  did  the  Prussian  govern¬ 
ment  officially  bring  it  to  the  knowledge  of  the  Euiope 
cabinets  by  means  of  circular  notes  ?  “  ever  a ^war ^w 

necessary,”  he  declared,  “it  is  this  war,  to  which  Pruss  a 
drives  us.  .  .  •  Had  they  given  us  any  satisfaction  m 
the  matter  we  should  have  been  contented,  but  the  g 
of  Prussia  persistently  refuses  to  enter  into  a  promise. 
Have  we  in  any  way  allowed  ourselves  to  be  carried  away 

by  passion?  Not  in  the  least.  We  continued  to  negotiate 

when  they  called  us  a  ministry  of  cowardice  and  sham  , 
and  in  the  meantime  they  announce  toEurope  that 
they  have  shown  our  envoy  the  door!  ”  Teo  cia  war 
manifesto,  finally  -  issued  on  the  19th  of  July,  187 
set  its  seal  on  the  weakness  of  the  trench  cause  by  de¬ 
claring  -that  the  emperor’s  government  was  obliged  to 
perceive  in  the  king’s  refusal  to  make  the  required  prom¬ 
ise  an  arriere  penste,  dangerous  alike  to  trance  and  o 
the  balance  of  power  in  Europe.  For  an  arnere  pensee, 
then,  France  went  into  this  struggle,  which  was  to  cost 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  lives  and  billions  of  money^ 
It  was  not  the  emperor,  it  was  ,his_  ministers,  Olivier  an 
Gramont,  who  were  to  blame.  It  was  they  who  pre- 
kended  to  have  in  their 'hands  insulting  despatches  from 
the  Prussian  government,  which  they  refused  to  show 
and  which  did  not  exist.  The  declaration  of  war  was 
the  first  communication  that  passed  through  the  ord 
nary  diplomatic  channels.  There  was  no  ultimatum,  no 


THE  RECKONING  WITH  FRANCE  423 

formal  refusal.  And  the  Empress  Eugenie  took  the  side 
of  the  excited  ministers.  “  Votre  trdne  tombe  dans  la 
boue/”  she  cried  to  her  husband;  and,  when  the  die  had 
been  cast,  <,<,0,est  ma  guerre  d  moi  !  ” 

As  for  the  German  people  at  this  crisis,  their  enthusiasm 
for  the  king  of  ■  Prussia  and  his  cause  surpassed  anything 
of  the  kind  that  has  ever  been  chronicled  in  the  nation’s 
history.  William’s  journey  from  Ems  to  Berlin  was  one 
hearty  ovation.  Everywhere  the  stations  were  decorated 
with  garlands  of  oak,  —  the  national  tree,  the  symbol  of 
German  sturdiness.  From  the  Potsdamer  station  to  the 
palace,  the  streets  were  filled  with  an  excited  multitude  in 
which  all  differences  of  rank  were  forgotten.  “  The  king 
looked  majestic  as  ever,”  writes  the  Times  correspondent, 
“but  with  a  melancholy  shade  overcasting  his  features. 
He  had  scarcely  arrived  when  tables  were  brought  out  and 
placed  unter  den  Linden ,  and  loyal  addresses,  promising  to 
lay  down  life  and  property  for  the  country,  signed  al 
fresco”  “As  our  fathers  stood  by  the  father  of  your 
royal  Majesty  from  1813  to  1815,”  —  ran  one  of  them, — 

“  so  will  we  all  devote  our  lives  and  property  to  the  support 
and  security  of  your  throne.”  Not  only  was  the  mobiliza¬ 
tion  of  a  million  soldiers  carried  on  with  feverish  haste, 
but  thousands  of  men,  exempt  for  various  reasons,  pressed 
t  f°rwar(i  to  share  in  the  war.  “  Servants  are  running 
away,”  says  the  Times ,  “  and  tradespeople  cannot  trust 
their  messengers  to  come  back  when  sent  out  on  errands. 

.  .  .  One  trade  only  flourishes  at  this  moment.  A  uni¬ 
versal  change  of  costume  has  been  made  over  night.  The 
uniform  has  superseded  the  black  garb  of  the  judge,  the 
merchant’s  overcoat,  and  the  mason’s  apron.  ...  In 
Bremen  a  merchant  who  dared  to  open  his  mouth  against 
the  king  of  Prussia  has  had  his  house  demolished.”  And 
again,  later :  “  If  determination  and  resolve,  if  a  longing 

fi 

I 

I  ; 


Patriotic 
enthusiasm 
of  the 
Germans. 


424 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


for  the  war  that  is  unavoidable,  coupled  with  a  melancholy 
thought  of  the  horrors  it  will  bring  in  its  tram,  may  be 
Said  to  constitute  excitement,  the  country  must  be  pro¬ 
nounced  in  a  fever  heat.  ...  It  is  a  sentiment  which 
not  only  strengthens  the  will,  but  actually  elevates  the 
morals  of  the  people.  Never  were  the  taverns  emptier 
than  now ;  never  was  the  number  of  crimes  and  offences 
smaller  than  during  the  last  agitated  week.  ...  the 
Greifswald  and  Marburg  universities  have  had  to  be  shut 
up  because  of  the  students  volunteering  in  a  body.  ... 
At  least  fifty  gentlemen  [the  number  rose  later  to  nearly 
a  thousand]  have  offered  prizes  to  soldiers  who  may  cap¬ 
ture  French  flags  and  cannon.  ...  The  Germans  at 
St.  Louis  telegraphed  to  Speaker  Simson  they  would 
send  him  a  million  dollars  as  their  contribution  to  the 

North  and  ^NoTthe  least  surprising  feature  of  the  preparations  for 
Shol  one  war  was  the  complete  forgetfulness  of  all  local  differences, 
mind.  Napoleon  tried  to  pose  as  the  friend  of  the  South  German 

states  and  the  liberator  of  those  recently  annexed  lands, 
which  he  represented  as  groaning  under  the  Prussian  yoke. 

«  Hanoverians,  Hessians,  inhabitants  of  Nassau  and  l  rank- 
fort !  ”  wrote  the  Paris  Journal  Ojjiciel,  “  it  is  not  enoug 
that  you  should  be  the  victims  of  M.  Bismarck’s  ambition ; 
the  Prussian  minister  desires  that  you  should  become  is 
accomplices  —  you  are  worthy  to  fight  in  a  better  cause. 
Hostilities  had  been  declared  against  Prussia  alone,  ignor¬ 
ing  the  newly  formed  North  German  Confederation.  “  By 
his  mere  declaration  of  war,”  writes  the  observant  Times 
correspondent,  “  Napoleon  has  done  more  toward  unifying 
Germany  than  in  the  ordinary  course  of  things  could  have 
been  accomplished  in  a  generation  or  two.”  In  Munich 
some  fifteen  thousand  people  went  to  the  palace  to  than 
the  king  for  siding  with  the  North  ;  Iburg,  a  small  town 


!' 

i 


THE  RECKONING  WITH  FRANCE 


425 


i  Hanover,  offered  a  hundred  thalers  to  him  who  should 
jize  the  first  French  standard.  The  Saxon  minister  of  war 
raited  on  King  William  to  solicit  for  the  Saxon  army  the 
onor  of  forming  the  van  of  the  German  forces. 

On  July  16,  throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  Orderly 
ae  land,  the  telegraph  bore  the  message  :  “  The  army  is  to  mobilife^he 
e  mobilized  according  to  plan ;  ”  and  so  completely  had 
11  details  been  arranged  months  beforehand  that  Moltke, 
s  he  said  himself,  needed  but  to  announce  the  hour  of  cle- 
arture  of  the  trains  to  set  the  whole  machinery  in  motion, 
ame  and  again,  with  his  famous  little  tin  soldiers,  he  had 
forked  out  the  initial  problems  of  the  campaign,  Boon, 
he  minister  of  war,  declared  that  the  two  weeks  of  mo- 


dlizing  were  the  quietest  of  his  official  life  :  so  clear  had 
teen  the  instructions  that  no  questions  remained  to  be 
,sked  or  answered.  There  was  no  undue  haste,  no  con- 
usion.  When  the  soldiers  left  the  barracks  they  were  all 
quipped,  all  ready  for  action.  More  than  a  million  men 
vere  called  out,  about  half  of  whom  were  actively  engaged 
n  the  field. 

With  the  French  it  was  all  different.  The  minister  of  Confusion 
var,  Le  Boeuf,  had,  indeed,  declared  that  the  army  was 
irchiprete ,  that  it  was  ready  to  the  last  button.  The  c^np°s> 
joldiers  were  huddled  off  to  the  neighborhood  of  Metz 
!  tnd  Strassburg,  but  without  the  bare  necessaries  of  exist¬ 
ence.  They  had  had  the  advantage  of  proximity,  of 
ionvenient  access  by  railroad,  of  so-called  u  standing 
pamps,”  from  which  they  were  supposed  to  be  all  ready 
to  march  out.  The  army  of  the  line  was  not  so  inferior 
in  numbers  to  that  of  the  Germans,  though  the  reserves 
were  weaker  by  several  hundred  thousand.  The  men 
were  brave  and  devoted,  but  the  central  direction  was 
altogether  lacking  in  vigor  and  in  forethought.  The 
reports  of  the  generals  to  the  war  office  are  monotonous 


426 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Ignorance 
and  conceit 
of  the 
French. 


in  their  similarity,  in  their  constant  tone  of  complaint : 

“  no  money  in  the  corps  treasury,”  “  no  sugar,  no  coffee, 
no  rice,  no  brandy,  no  salt,  very  little  ham  and  Zwiebcich , 
send  at  once  a  million  rations.”  Or,  worse  still :  u  we  have 
not  a  single  map  of  the  French  frontier.”  One  general 
of  artillery  writes  that  five  hundred  out  of  eight  hundred 
harness  collars  are  too  tight  for  his  horses,  while  another 
sends  word  in  utter  despair  :  “  not  found  my  brigade,  not 
found  my  division  general.  What  shall  I  do  ?  Don’t 
know  the  whereabouts  of  my  regiments  !  ” 

Perhaps  the  worst  fault  of  the  h  rench  —  the  one  that 
caused  them  to  commit  the  gravest  errors  —  was  their  self- 
sufficiency,  their  ignorance  of  what  was  happening  in  other 
lands.  Their  original  plan  of  campaign  had  been  based 
on  the  hope  that  the  South  German  states  could  be  sepa¬ 
rated  from  the  North  by  thrusting  an  army  in  between. 
They  had  fancied  that  foreign  countries  would  feel  a  vast 
sympathy  for  them.  Their  information  about  the  Prus¬ 
sians —  their  character  as  well  as  their  movements  —  was 
ridiculously  false.  The  rumor  was  believed  that  two 
hundred  persons  had  dTed  ttt_  Berlin  from  dxsenterj 
causedT~by^  It  was  supremely  typical 

of  the  general  ignorance,  when,  as  late  as  September  5, 
1870,  the  Paris  Figaro  announced  that  it  now  knew  the 
name  of  the  Prussian  general  who  had  played  France  such 
scurvy  tricks  and  disclosed  so  many  secrets  :  it  was  a 
General  Staff,  who  had  been  allowed  to  move  in  the  very 
best  society  of  Paris.  Well  for  them  had  their  own 
general  staff  been  more  efficient,  and  had  it  busied  itself 
more  with  gathering  information  with  regard  to  the  enemy. 
But  its  members  were  chosen  largely  on  the  showing  of 
examinations  for  graduation  from  the  military  academy 
of  St.  Cyr,  passed  years  before ;  and  it  is  not  strange  that 
the  organization  itself  was  immeasurably  behind  the  gen- 


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THE  RECKONING  WITH  FRANCE 


427 


ral  staff  of  the  Germans,  whose  one  idea  was  to  employ 
he  best  talent  the  country  could  command. 

With  rare  diplomatic  skill  Bismarck  had  almost  elimi-  Exposure 
lated  the  chance  that  foreign  countries  might  prove  °^e“ch 
nconveniently  favorable  to  France.  Well  knowing  that  ^n°dize 
England  would  bitterly  resent  any  attempt  on  Belgian  ment. 
ndependence, — which,  indeed,  it  had  formally  guaranteed, 

—he  had,  two  years  before,  lured  Benedetti  into  committing 
,o  writing  the  most  distasteful  proposition  that  could  well 
lave  come  to  the  ears  of  a  Briton :  Germany  was  to  aid 
France  to  acquire  or  conquer  Belgium ;  France  was  not 
-o  hinder  German  unity,  and  to  favor  a  Prussian  increase 
if  territory  at  the  expense  of  North  Germany.  This  draft 
Bismarck  now  published,  sending  the  facsimile  to  the 
diplomatic  corps,  and  showing  the  original  to  whom  it 
might  concern.  “  A  predatory  treaty,”  writes  the  London 
Times,  “  in  the  good  old-fashioned  style  of  the  seventeenth 
century  5  .  .  .  since  the  days  of  Napoleon  I.  the  world 
has  not  seen  the  like  of  it.  Benedetti  s  feeble  defence, 
that  the  whole  plan  had  originated  with  the  Prussian 
minister,  that  he  had  written  it  down  at  Bismarck’s  dicta¬ 
tion,  and  that  the  idea  had  been  repudiated  by  the  French 
emperor,  was  refuted  by  the  publication  of  a  letter  in 
which  the  ambassador  spoke  of  receiving  his  original  in¬ 
structions  from  Vichy,  the  temporary  abode  of  Napoleon. 

Other  disclosures  followed,  showing  a  greed  of  German 
territory  which  Bismarck  had  always  refused  to  giatify. 

There  arose  a  great  wave  of  patriotism  for  this  Prussia 
which  had  disdained  to  aggrandize  itself  with  the  help 
of  a  foreign  dictator. 

As  to  Austria  and  Italy,  it  was  well  known  that  a  few 
French  victories  would  have  encouraged  them  to  take  part 
in  the  war;  while  Russia,  bound  by  ties  of  gratitude  for 
the  neutrality  observed  in  the  Crimean  War,  and  influ- 


428 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GET  AY 


German 
zeal  and 
devotion. 


The  en¬ 
gagement 
at  Saar- 
briicken. 


enced  by  the  blood  relationship  be  een  the  king  oi 
Prussia  and  the  Czar,  declared  her  intention  of  remaining 
aloof  so  long  as  Austria  did  the  same. 

The  general  plan  of  the  Germans,  as  officially  formu¬ 
lated,  was  simply  “to  seek  the  main  force  of  the  enemy 
and  attack  it  when  found.”  Rapid  successes  were  abso¬ 
lutely  necessary  in  order  to  keep  Austria  and  Italy  at 
bay,  and  to  prevent  France  from  calling  out  her  levee  en 
masse.  That  is  why,  from  the  beginning,  such  desperate 
chances  were  taken.  The  daring  charges  up  steep  heights 
in  the  very  teeth  of  batteries  of  mitrailleuses  were  very 
costly  of  human  life.  In  the  case  of  almost  every  victory 
the  Germans  lost  more  in  killed  and  wounded  than  their 
adversaries,  but  in  the  end  it  shortened  the  war.  “  Men, 
it  must  be!  Forward  with  God!  ”  shouted  brave  Captain 
von  Oppen  as  he  rushed  his  men  up  the  fatal  Red  Mount 
of  Spicheren,  and  his  was  the  spirit  of  the  whole  German 
people. 

Moltke  had  divided  his  forces  into  three  great  armies: 
the  first  and  smallest,  under  Steinmetz,  marched  south¬ 
ward  from  Treves,  on  the  Mosel,  and  joined  on  the  river 
Saar  with  the  second  and  largest,  under  Prince  Frederick 
Charles,  —  which  had  left  Mainz,  and  passed  down  by  way 
of  Kaiserslautern,  Landstuhl,  and  Homburg.  The  third 
army,  consisting  of  South  German  troops,  commanded  by 
the  crown  prince  of  Prussia,  moved  in  a  southwesterly 
direction  from  Spires  and  Landau,  arriving  at  the  French 
boundary  near  Weissenburg,  on  the  river  Lauter.  In  a 
larger  sense  the  German  force  formed  one  great  army,  of 
which  Prince  Frederick  Charles  commanded  the  centre, 
Steinmetz  the  right,  and  the  crown  prince  the  left  wing. 

The  first  skirmishing  fell  to  the  lot  of  the  advance  guard 
of  Prince  Frederick  Charles’s  army.  For  days,  a  small 
force  of  fusiliers  and  Uhlans,  under  Lieutenant  Colonel 


THE  RECKONING  WITH  FRANCE 


429 


Pestel,  were  able,  at  Saarbriicken,  to  hold  in  check  some 
ten  times  their  own  number  of  the  enemy.  The  French 
thought  themselves  opposed  by  a  considerable  force  — 

French  newspapers  estimated  it  at  two  hundred  thousand  — 
an  illusion  which  the  Prussians  kept  up  by  riding  one 
day  in  full  uniform,  another  in  white  drill  jackets,  now 
with  one  kind  of  a  cap,  now  with  another.  On  August  2 
Napoleon  ordered  Frossard  to  reconnoitre  in  force,  and 
himself  appeared  on  the  field  with  his  son  and  heir,  who, 
to  shouts  of  vive  le  prince  imperial ,  turned  the  crank  that 
discharged  the  first  mitrailleuse.  For  the  first  and  almost 
the  last  time,  victory  smiled  affably  on  the  French  arms. 

The  great  invasion  of  Germany  had  begun  auspiciously, 
and,  after  three  hours  of  fighting,  the  Prussians  withdrew. 
Napoleon  telegraphed  home  that  “Louis”  had  sustained 
so  well  his  baptism  of  fire  as  to  move  the  soldiers  to  tears. 

The  engagement,  in  which  the  total  losses  on  each  side  had 
been  about  eighty-five  men,  was  magnified  into  a  great  vic¬ 
tory.  The  mitrailleuses  and  the  chassepots  were  lauded 
to  the  skies,  and  newspapers  declared  that,  with  this 
second  of  August,  a  new  era  had  begun.  In  the  streets 
of  Paris  strangers  fell  upon  each  other’s  necks,  weeping 
for  joy.  Singers  from  the  opera  were  stopped  in  their 
carriages,  and  made  to  sing  “The  Marseillaise”  in  the 
open  air,  while  fifty  thousand  voices  joined  in  the  chorus. 

Thick  and  fast  came  rumors  of  fresh  triumphs.  It  was 
said,  and  believed,  that  the  crown  prince  had  been  cap¬ 
tured,  with  his  whole  army. 

The  first  serious  encounter  occurred  at  Weissenburg,  Weissen- 
two  days  later,  when  the  crown  prince’s  army  defeated  a  burS- 
division  of  MacMahon’s  forces,  under  Douay.  The  two 
weeks  that  followed  were  crowded  with  more  desperate 
engagements  than  had  ever  taken  place  within  a  period  of 
the  same  length  in  the  history  of  either  nation.  Weissen- 


430 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERJ 


'orth. 


Spicheren. 


burg  resulted  in  the  capture  of  a  thousand  prisoners,  and 
in  a  loss  in  dead  and  wounded,  on  the  German  side,  of 
fifteen  hundred,  on  the  French,  of  twelve  hundred.  The 
feature  of  the  day  was  the  storming  of  the  Geisberg,  a 
steep  little  hill,  crowned  by  a  stone  chateau,  the  garrison 
of  which  were  finally  taken  prisoners. 

Twelve  miles  to  the  southwest  of  Weissenburg,  on  the 
steep  heights  near  Worth,  MacMahon  drew  up  his  army  in 
line  of  battle,  strongly  fortifying  his  position  by  trenches 
and  redoubts.  Here,  on  the  6th  of  August, — while  Fred¬ 
erick  Charles  was  occupied  with  Frossard  at  Spicheren,  — 
was  fought  a  battle,  in  which  the  German  losses  were 
greater  than  at  Koniggratz,  but  in  which  MacMahon  was 
completely  routed,  losing  nine  thousand  prisoners,  thirty- 
three  cannon,  and  even  his  own  personal  belongings. 
Under  the  necessity  of  reorganizing  his  forces,  he  marched 
off  in  the  direction  of  Chalons. 

Meanwhile,  at  Spicheren,  behind  Saarbriicken,  Frossard’s 
corps  had  stood  upon  a  hill  a  hundred  feet  high,  and  con¬ 
sidered  absolutely  impregnable.  Moreover,  the  French 
forces  greatly  exceeded  in  number  the  portions  of  the  Ger¬ 
man  first  and  second  armies  that  could  be  employed  against 
them.  Yet  Frossard  was  put  to  flight,  and  two  thousand 
prisoners  taken;  while  the  important  result  was  achieved, 
that  the  main  French  army,  to  which  Frossard’s  division 
had  belonged,  now  beat  a  retreat  in  the  direction  of  the 
protecting  walls  of  Metz.  Not  even  yet  were  the  boastful 
tones  of  the  Parisian  press  reduced  to  silence,  though  a 
horrible  faint-heartedness  had  seized  upon  the  people  at 
large.  “  General  Frossard  is  retreating  ...”  wrote  the 
Journal  Officiel ;  “it  almost  seems  as  if  the  enemy  wished 
to  offer  us  battle  on  our  own  ground.  That  would  have 
for  us  great  strategic  advantages.”  Worth  was  dubbed  a 
“  misfortune  full  of  triumph,”  and  the  praises  sung  of  the 


THE  RECKONING  WITH  FRANCE 


431 


f 


* 


splendid  retreat.  When  Edmond  About,  the  writer  of 
romances,  spoke  of  what  he  had  actually  seen  in  the  way 
of  panic  and  disorder,  he  was  cried  down  as  a  Prussian 
and  a  traitor.  More  in  accordance  with  truth  was  the 
wail  of  a  wounded  officer  as  he  saw  the  Germans  clam¬ 
bering  up  the  impregnable  hill  of  Spicheren,  “  La  France  , 
est  perdue  !  ” 

One  important  consequence  of  these  defeats  was  that  The  battles 
Napoleon  gave  up  the  chief  command  to  Bazaine,  —  whose  around 
problem  now  was  how  to  unite  most  readily  with  the  Metz* 
new  army  that  MacMahon  was  organizing  at  Chalons.  On 
Bazaine’s  track,  endeavoring  to  drive  him  back  into  Metz, 
were  the  armies  of  Steinmetz  and  Frederick  Charles ; 
while  the  crown  prince’s  army  wras  making  for  Chalons, 
taking  a  number  of  small  forts  on  the  way.  A  division 
of  Baden  troops,  in  the  meantime,  —  which  was  reenforced 
from  Germany  until  it  numbered  fifty  thousand  men,  and 
over  which  General  Werder  was  given  the  command, — had 
begun  the  siege  of  the  all-important  Strassburg,  which 
was  heroically  defended  by  the  French  general,  Uhrich. 

Among  the  villages  that  lie  among  the  hills  around 
Metz  are  Colombey,  Borny,  Nouilly  on  the  east;  Vionville, 
Rezonville,  and  Mars-la-Tour  on  the  southwest;  and,  on  the 
west,  Gravelotte  and  St.  Privat  —  the  latter  controlling 
the  northernmost  road  from  Metz  to  the  fortress  of  Verdun. 

At  each  of  these  groups  of  towns,  with  a  view  to  prevent¬ 
ing  Bazaine’s  escape,  there  were  furious  and  bloody  battles 
on  the  respective  days  of  August  14,  16,  and  18.  The 
Germans  were  victorious  except  at  Vionville, — which  was 
indecisive,  and  which  cost  each  side  sixteen  thousand 
men.  At  Gravelotte,  where  the  king  of  Prussia  conducted 
operations  in  person,  the  Germans  of  the  first  army  were 
needlessly  ordered  by  Steinmetz  into  such  a  murderous 
hail  that  the  latter,  for  this  and  other  mistakes,  was  later 

* 

i 


432 


A  SHOE  £  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Gravelotte. 


The  battle 
of  Sedan. 


dismissed  from  the  command.  The  main  part  of  his  army 
was  joined  to  that  of  Frederick  Charles.  During  these 
two  terrible  weeks  the  Germans  had  lost  some  sixty  thou¬ 
sand  men,  and  their  line  of  communication  with  Berlin 
was  one  continuous  line  of  lazarettes. 

Bazaine  might  have  effected  his  retreat  after  Mars-la- 
Tour  had  he  not  been  tempted  into  trying  once  more  the 
ordeal  of  battle.  But  after  Gravelotte  the  last  avenue  of 
escape  was  cut  off,  and,  with  his  huge  army  of  one  hun¬ 
dred  and  seventy  thousand  men,  he  was  forced  to  retire 
to  Metz.  This  great  fortress,  strong  by  position  and  well 
built,  was  now  hastily  placed  in  order,  a  part  of  the  neigh¬ 
borhood  inundated,  the  moats  filled  with  water,  supplies 
and  ammunition  brought  together  — in  short,  every  prepa¬ 
ration  made  for  withstanding  a  siege.  To  the  regular  643 
fortress  cannon  there  were  added  as  many  more  from  the 
field  army,  not  to  speak  of  72  of  the  deadly  mitrailleuses. 
The  main  disadvantage  was  an  overcrowded  condition  of 
the  city  that  necessitated  an  enormous  consumption  of  food: 
from  having  an  ordinary  population  of  but  47,000,  Metz 
was  now  suddenly  called  upon  to  shelter  and  nourish  some 
260,000,  among  whom  were  16,000  wounded  soldiers. 
There  was  no  chance  of  removing  the  feeble  or  the  sick, 
for,  within  four  days  after  Gravelotte,  Metz  was  com¬ 
pletely  surrounded  at  a  distance  of  seven  thousand  yards 
by  the  army  of  Frederick  Charles.  All  supplies  were  cut 
off,  and  the  terrible  process  of  reducing  by  starvation 
begun  in  all  form. 

The  Emperor  Napoleon  had  left  Bazaine’s  army  and 
taken  refuge  with  MacMahon.  He  would  have  returned  to 
Paris  had  not  the  Empress  Eugenie  telegraphed  that  his 
life  would  not  be  safe  from  his  own  subjects  in  his  own 
capital.  The  Parisians  were  determined  that  MacMahon 
should  march  to  the  relief  of  Bazaine,  underestimating 


THE  RECKONING  WITH  FRANCE 


433 


the  danger  from  the  crown  prince’s  army,  as  well  as  from 
the  seventy  thousand  men  —  the  new  fourth,  or  Maas 
army  —  that  Frederick  Charles  had  been  able  to  spare 
from  the  siege  of  Metz.  It  was  a  wild  hope,  that  of 
evading  these  vigilant  forces  and  descending  from  the 
north  on  Metz ;  and  Napoleon  III.  and  his  general  both 
realized  their  danger.  The  French  forces,  already  vastly 
inferior  in  discipline  and  morale ,  were  actually  outnum¬ 
bered  by  two  to  one.  On  the  last  three  days  of  August 
there  were  skirmishes,  the  results  of  which  boded  ill  for 
the  final  engagement. 

On  September  1,  1870,  was  fought  one  of  the  decisive 
battles  of  the  world  —  a  battle  that  resulted  in  the  sur¬ 
render  of  the  largest  army  ever  known  to  have  been  taken 
in  the  field,  a  battle  that  dethroned  a  dynasty  and  changed 
the  form  of  government  in  France.  Aware  at  last  of  the 
impossibility  of  breaking  through  to  Bazaine  in  Metz,  and 
hoping  for  nothing  more  now  than  to  save  his  own  army, 
MacMahon  took  up  a  defensive  position  near  Sedan.  Here 
some  protectioiTatTeast  was  offered  by  the  winding  Maas 
on  the  west  and  south,  and  by  the  Givonne  on  the  east. 
None  the  less  it  proved  a  death  trap:  the  French  called 
it  la  sounder e.  Fighting  from  early  dawn  to  evening 
the  Germans  gradually  surrounded  them ;  drove  them 
down  from  their  positions  at  Bazeilles  and  la  Moncelle, 
from  Daigny,  Haybes,  and  Givonne,  from  Floing,  Illy, 
and  St.  Menges,  and  from  the  sheltering  Bois  de  la 
Garonne ;  crowded  them  into  such  a  narrow  space  that 
manoeuvring  became  impossible,  then,  finally,  after  a  sig¬ 
nificant  pause  to  see  if  they  were  not  ready  to  save  further 
horrors  by  surrender,  trained  their  heavy  cannon  on  the 
worthless  old  fortress  and  on  the  chaotic  mass  of  men, 
horses,  cannon,  and  vehicles  that  overflowed  the  streets. 

From  the  hill  of  Frenois,  the  king  of  Prussia,  the  crown 

VOL.  II - 2  F 


434 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  sur¬ 
render  of 
Napoleon. 


prince,  Bismarck,  and  Moltke  looked  down  on  the  most  im¬ 
pressive  spectacle  that  man  could  have  well  devised.  Just 
below  them,  at  Floing,  took  place  a  terrific  conflict,  at 
closest  quarters,  between  German  sharpshooters  and  a 
body  of  chasseurs  cC afrique,  who  had  remained  hidden  in  a 
little  valley  :  the  whole  troop  was  half  annihilated  by  the 
relentless  fire  of  the  Jagers.  The  horses  plunged  madly 
down  steep  descents,  or  turned,  riderless,  and  dashed  into 
the  infantry  behind  them.  In  Bazeilles,  and  in  Sedan 
itself,  fire  broke  out,  and  blood-red  columns  of  flame  rose 
in  the  air. 

During  the  whole  day  none  of  the  Germans  had  dreamt 
that  Napoleon  himself  was  in  the  fortress.  He  was  known, 
indeed,  to  have  joined  MacMahon’s  army,  but  was  believed 
to  have  slipped  away  —  as  his  namesake  had  done  in  that 
other  disastrous  retreat  on  the  icy  plains  of  Russia.  First 
came  rumors  to  the  contrary;  then,  —  when  the  situation  in 
Sedan  had  become  too  terrible  for  human  beings  to  endure, 
and  the  cry  for  mercy  had  gone  forth,  —  an  officer  of  the 
general  staff,  Bronsart  von  Schellendorf,  stepped  up  to  the 
king  and  said,  “Your  Royal  Majesty,  Sedan  capitulates 
with  the  whole  army  and  with  the  emperor,  who  is  in 
their  midst.”  “  For  a  moment,”  writes  a  distinguished 
bystander,  “the  breath  of  every  hearer  stopped  in  his 
breast ;  but  then  broke  forth  a  storm  of  rejoicing  that  for 
a  few  minutes  carried  with  it  even  the  gravest  men.”  A 
white  flag  rose  over  the  fortress,  and  another  waved  in  the 
hand  of  the  emperor’s  adjutant,  Count  Reille,  who  came 
riding  up  with  a  letter  for  the  king.  “  My  brother :  ”  it 
ran,  “  having  failed  in  the  attempt  to  die  in  the  midst 
of  my  troops,  nothing  is  left  me  but  to  render  my  sword 
into  the  hands  of  your  Majesty.”  For  the  last  time  the 
wretched  man  addressed  a  crowned  head  as  his  equal. 
It  was  ended,  the  struggle  of  a  tottering  despot  for  the 


1 


THE  RECKONING  WITH  FRANCE  435 

allegiance  of  his  people.  Napoleon  III.  had  had  to  con¬ 
tend,  not  only  with  the  misfortunes  of  war,  but  with  a 
bodily  sickness  so  great  that  he  is  said  to  have  painted 
his  face  to  hide  its  pallor.  “  My  eyes  chanced  to  wander 
a  little  to  the  left,”  writes  Count  Frankenberg  on  the 
day  after  the  battle,  “  and  I  crossed  glances  with  a  faded, 
bowed  man  who  was  sitting  on  a  wooden  stool  in  front  of 
a  peasant’s  house.  It  went  through  me  like  an  electric 
shock  —  this  was  Napoleon!  He  feebly  answered  my 
military  greeting  by  lifting  his  fatigue  cap.” 

The  fallen  emperor  at  the  moment  was  waiting  to  be  taken 
to  an  interview  with  the  Prussian  king.  Bismarck  had 
already  talked  to  Napoleon  and  had  tried  to  settle  the  terms 
of  a  peace ;  but  the  emperor  had  shifted  responsibility  by 
declaring  that,  as  a  prisoner,  he  had  no  power  to  treat. 
He  hoped  that  the  king  would  give  him  better  terms  for  the 
army  than  Bismarck  was  willing  to  grant ;  but  the  chan¬ 
cellor  delayed  the  meeting  until  the  capitulation  had  been 
signed  by  the  commanding  generals.  When  it  did  take 
place,  it  was  short  but  most  affecting.  “We  were  both 
deeply  moved,”  wrote  the  king  to  his  wife.  “I  cannot 
describe  what  I  felt  at  this  interview,  having  seen  Na¬ 
poleon  only  three  years  ago  at  the  height  of  his  power.” 
The  prisoner  was,  indeed,  bowed  and  broken.  “Your 
army  is  sublime,”  he  said  to  William,  and,  —  speaking  of 
the  superiority  of  the  artillery,  —  “  that  touches  me  person¬ 
ally.”  Napoleon  was  treated  with  great  consideration. 
Being  offered Y^veral  alternatives,  he  chose  as  a  place  of 
banishment  the  castle  of  Wilhelmshohe  in  Cassel,  which 
had  been  the  residence  of  Jerome  Bonaparte  when  king  of 
Westphalia.  He  was  allowed  to  take  with  him  a  suite  of 
forty  persons,  with  their  servants,  besides  some  eighty-five 
horses,  and  numerous  carriages.  As  the  emperor  would 
have  been  an  object  of  curiosity  along  the  route,  it  was 


I 

t'j 

; 

I 


Napoleon 
sent  into 
exile. 


436 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OP  GERMANY 


The  terms 
of  the  capit¬ 
ulation. 


The  news 
of  Sedan 
received  in 
Paris. 


arranged  that  his  train  should  stop  at  none  of  the  regular 
stations. 

Meanwhile  in  Donchery  the  terms  of  the  capitulation 
had  been  discussed  by  the  military  commanders  until  far 
into  the  night.  General  Wimpffen,  who  had  taken  over 
the  command  from  the  wounded  MacMahon,  had  tried 
in  vain  to  procure  better  terms  than  the  unconditional  sur¬ 
render  of  fortress,  men,  and  supplies,  which  Moltke  and 
Bismarck  demanded.  Either  this,  he  was  told,  or,  at  nine 
o’clock  on  the  following  day,  the  guns  must  recommence 
their  deadly  work,  —  and  Moltke  had  drawn  a  ghastly,  but 
true,  picture  of  the  helplessness  of  the  French.  After  a 
council  of  war,  held  at  six  o’clock  in  the  morning,  and  face 
to  face  with  the  fact  that  provisions  and  ammunition  were 
at  an  end,  Wimpffen  sought  out  the  king  at  Frenois, 
and  in  dignified  terms  acknowledged  the  necessity  of 
complying  with  the  German  demands.  He  thanked  for  the 
one  concession,  that  the  officers  might  go  free  on  parole, — a 
concession  of  which  but  few  availed  themselves.  The  rest 
were  sent  off  to  various  towns  of  Germany,  where  at  least 
they  increased  their  geographical  knowledge.  Those  ban¬ 
ished  to  Breslau  expressed  their  pleasure  at  finding  that  it 
was  not,  as  they  had  supposed,  a  lonely  village,  but  a  city 
of  two  hundred  thousand  inhabitants. 

For  a  moment  it  was  believed  that  Sedan  would  bring 
about  a  truce  to  hostilities,  —  that  an  end  would  be  put  to 
this  ghastly  butchery  for  an  arriere  pensee  ;  to  these  shal¬ 
low  graves  where  hundreds  of  shattered  corpses  were  laid 
at  a  time  only  to  be  exposed  by  the  next  severe  rain ;  to 
these  forgotten  wounded,  who  sighed  their  hearts  out  in  dim 
forests  and  under  hedges  ;  to  these  improvised  hospitals 
with  the  rough  blood-red  bench,  and  the  slowly  mounting 
heap  of  severed  arms  and  legs  and  stiffening  bodies  in  the 
corner ;  to  the  halt  and  maimed  and  blind,  sent  out  to  be  a 


THE  RECKONING  WITH  FRANCE 


437 


burden  to  themselves  and  to  the  world.  At  Sedan  23,000, 
during  the  war  thus  far,  some  170,000,  men  had  been  killed 
or  wounded ;  and  as  yet  the  horrors  of  siege  and  cold  and 
disease  had  scarcely  been  experienced. 

In  Paris  the  news  of  the  capitulation  of  Sedan  was  not 
fully  known  until  thirty-six  hours  after  it  had  taken  place. 
Press  and  government  united  in  putting  down  the  rumors  of 
disaster.  The  G-aulois  feared  the  destruction  of  its  quar¬ 
ters  should  it  publish  the  ghastly  truth.  On  the  day 
but  one  before  the  battle,  Minister  Palikao,  Olivier’s  suc¬ 
cessor,  had  assured  both  Chambers  that  the  Prussians  had 
lost  two  hundred  thousand  men.  On  the  3d  of  September, 
he  promised  to  have  ready  within  five  days  an  army  of  five 
hundred  thousand  men.  There  were  stories,  even  at  this 
critical  time,  of  French  successes,  —  that  a  band  of  volun¬ 
teers,  with  bottles  of  kerosene,  had  invaded  Germany  and 
set  aflame  the  whole  Black  Forest ;  that  King  William  and 
Bismarck  had  both  suddenly  lost  their  minds,  had  been 
seen  dancing  a  can-can  together,  and  had  been  expedited 
back  to  Germany.  All  the  more  dismal,  all  the  more 
crushing  when  it  came,  was  the  news  of  the  capture  of  the 
whole  army :  of  so  and  so  many  officers,  as  a  German  tele¬ 
graphed  home,  so  and  so  many  soldiers,  and  —  one 
EMPEROR. 

Gladly  would  the  French  have  now  made  peace  had  it 
not  been  for  the  intention  of  the  Germans,  made  known 
throughout  the  press,  to  demand  the  cession  of  territory. 
Napoleon,  against  whom  alone  the  Prussian  king  was  con¬ 
sidered  to  have  been  making  war,  had  fallen,  and  the  land 
was  filled  with  bitterness  against  him.  Scarcely  a  voice 
was  raised  in  his  behalf  when,  on  September  4,  a  tumultuous 
Assembly,  headed  by  the  brilliant  lawyer,  Leon  Gambetta, 
declared  him  deposed,  appointed  a  committee  of  national 
defence,  and  confirmed  General  Trochu  as  military  head  of 


Proclama¬ 
tion  of  the 
French 
Republic. 


f 


438  A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

Paris.  Jules  Favre  issued  a  circular  proclaiming  the  re¬ 
public,  and  asked  if  William  meant  to  furnish  the  nine¬ 
teenth  century  with  the  spectacle  of  two  nations  destroying 
one  another,  and  heaping  corpse  upon  corpse  and  ruin 
upon  ruin !  41  Yet,  if  it  is  a  challenge,  we  accept,  he  de¬ 

clared  ;  44  not  an  inch  of  our  territory,  not  a  stone  of  our 
fortresses,  will  we  cede.5  But  the  time  had  come  for  the 
Germans  to  requite  past  wrongs  and  to  secure  themselves 
against  future  attacks.  44  Against  whom  are  you  fight¬ 
ing?”  asked  Thiers  in  Vienna  of  the  Prussian  historian, 
Ranke.  44  Against  Louis  XIV.,”  was  the  answer.  Twenty 
times,  declared  Bismarck,  had  France  been  the  aggressor 
in  wars  against  Germany.  It  was  not,  now,  with  these 
“  gentlemen  of  the  pavement,”  as  he  called  them,  but  with 
some  more  stable  government  that  the  chancellor  intended 
to  make  peace.  No  amount  of  such  florid  eloquence  as 
Victor  Hugo  poured  forth  —  when,  in  his  manifesto  to 
the  German  people,  he  declared  that  Prussia  might  win 
the  victories,  but  France  would  have  the  gloire  —  could 
delay  the  fatal  march  on  Paris,  or  prevent  the  formulation 
of  the  new  claim  to  Alsace  and  Lorraine  with  their  strong 
fortresses  of  Metz  and  Strassburg. 

Thenego-  To  Ferrieres —  the  magnificent  chateau  of  the  Roths- 

tiations  at  childs,  which  the  Prussian  headquarters  had  appropriated 

Ferrises.  to  itg  own  use  _  Jules  Favre  came  to  try  his  powers  of  per¬ 
suasion  ;  while  Thiers  started  on  a  fruitless  journey  to  the 
different  courts  of  Europe  in  a  vain  search  for  armed  inter¬ 
vention.  Bismarck  would  not  treat  with  Favre  concerning 
a  final  peace,  but  proposed  a  truce  of  three  weeks,  during 
which  elections  should  be  held  for  a  new  and  stable  gov¬ 
ernment.  In  the  meantime  Toul,  Bitsch,  Mont  Valerien, 
and  Strassburg  were  to  be  handed  over  to  the  Germans, 
and  the  garrison  of  Strassburg  were  to  be  considered 
\  prisoners  of  war.  At  this  last  proposition  Favre  burst 


THE  RECKONING  WITH  FRANCE 


439 


forth,  “You  forget,  count,  that  you  are  talking  to  a 
Frenchman !  ”  He  called  Strassburg  the  key  of  the 
house  —  “of  our  house,”  corrected  Bismarck  —  and  re¬ 
fused  to  sanction  the  sacrifice  of  this  heroic  garrison, 
which  had  withstood  a  siege  of  six  weeks,  coupled  with 
a  fierce  bombardment,  but  which  now  was  at  the  end  of 
its  resources.  It  surrendered  a  week  later.  Toul  fell 
on  the  very  day  of  the  interview  with  Favre. 

All  negotiations  having  failed,  the  siege  of  Paris  was  Thebegin- 
begun  —  the  most  elaborate  single  undertaking  of  which  ninS  of  the 
military  history  bears  record.  An  immense  area,  that  of  ®iege  of 
the  largest  fortified  city  in  the  world,  was  to  be  surrounded 
by  an  army  from  which,  at  the  moment,  detachments  were 
needed  to  conduct  other  important  sieges,  to  guard  innu¬ 
merable  prisoners,  and  to  keep  open  a  long  line  of  commu¬ 
nication.  This  army  numbered,  at  first,  but  150,000  men. 

The  garrison  of  Paris,  on  the  other  hand,  reached  to  the 
considerable  total  of  400,000,  of  whom  less  than  a  fourth, 
however,  were  regular  soldiers  of  the  line.  Even  these 
latter  in  the  skirmishing  that  took  place  on  September  19, 
the  day  of  the  closing  of  the  iron  ring,  showed  a  deplorable 
want  of  bravery  and  discipline.  The  Germans  trusted 
much  to  the  effect  of  famine  in  an  overcrowded  town  with 
a  regular  population  of  2,000,000.  They  calculated  that  re¬ 
sistance  could  last,  at  the  utmost,  not  more  than  ten  weeks. 

But,  in  the  few  days  of  grace,  Herculean  efforts  had  been 
made  to  provision  the  city :  from  the  neighboring  towns, 
by  ship,  by  rail,  and  by  wagon,  thousands  of  tons  of  sup¬ 
plies  were  brought  in ;  cattle  in  great  numbers  were  let 
loose  in  the  Bois  de  Boulogne ;  chemists  were  set  to  work 
to  invent  nourishing  compounds,  and  much  that  had  been 
considered  only  fit  for  the  manure  heap  was  handed  over 
to  the  sausage-maker.  Whole  stretches  of  vacant  land 
were  enclosed  with  glass,  and  florists  devoted  their  energies 

> 

i 


440 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  pro¬ 
visional 
government 
at  Tours. 


Gambetta 
at  Tours. 


with  great  success  to  the  growing  of  lettuce  and  cabbage. 
On  the  forts  which  surrounded  the  city,  work  was  pushed 
with  the  utmost  zeal.  There  was  no  lack  of  cannon,  no 
scarcity  of  ammunition  —  indeed,  it  was  reckoned  that 
Mont  Valerien,  on  one  occasion,  discharged  some  thou¬ 
sands  of  shots,  at  nearly  500  francs  a  shot,  without  hitting 
a  single  German. 

The  hope  of  the  besieged  was  that,  now  that  its  holy  of 
holies  was  in  danger,  the  population  of  France  would  rise 
as  one  man.  And,  indeed,  new  armies  were  at  once  started 
at  all  four  points  of  the  compass;  while  a  provisional  govern¬ 
ment  was  established  at  Tours.  Communication  was  kept 
up,  at  first,  by  means  of  telegraph  lines  running  under  the 
Seine,  which  were  not  immediately  discovered ;  and,  later, 
by  the  aid  of  carrier  pigeons  —  to  the  feathers  of  which 
were  attached  messages  reduced  to  the  smallest  possible 
compass  by  the  aid  of  the  camera  and  microscope.  A  sheet 
as  large  as  the  London  Times  could  thus  be  brought  within 
the  compass  of  four  square  inches.  When  it  became  evi¬ 
dent  that,  for  want  of  central  direction,  the  efforts  at  relief 
were  not  proceeding  as  fast  as  needful,  the  minister  of  war, 
Gambetta,  determined  to  leave  Paris  and  to  proceed  himself 
to  Tours.  To  break  through  the  German  lines  was  an  im¬ 
possibility  ;  but  balloons  had  already  been  tried  with  some 
success  for  reconnoitring,  and  for  sending  despatches. 
To  one  of  these,  Gambetta  committed  himself.  Though 
discovered  and  shot  at  by  German  rifles,  he  reached  his 
destination  safely,  and  soon,  with  the  powers  of  a  virtual 
dictator,  had  the  so-called  army  of  the  Loire  well  under 
way.  Early  in  November  the  levee  en  masse  was  decreed; 
and  only  bodily  infirmity  could  excuse  a  man  between  the 
ages  of  twenty  and  forty  from  joining  the  standards,  or 
one  under  sixty  from  forming  a  reserve. 

The  German  investment  of  Paris  was  a  triumph  of  mili* 


THE  RECKONING  WITH  FRANCE 


441 


tary  art.  Obliged,  with  a  comparatively  small  force,  to 
guard  a  line  some  fifty  miles  in  length,  and  with  few  siege 
guns  at  their  disposal,  they  set  to  work  to  remedy  all 
defects  by  enormously  strong  fortifications.  Thousands  of 
men  were  put  to  digging  trenches ;  to  throwing  up  earth¬ 
works  ;  to  hewing  down  trees  and  piling  them  together, 
so  as  to  form  barricades  of  incredible  thickness ;  to  building 
blockhouses  and  subterranean  refuges ;  to  erecting  posts  of 
observation,  from  which,  with  the  aid  of  the  telescope,  the 
whole  field  of  operations  could  be  surveyed ;  to  damming 
up  streams  to  render  whole  districts  impassable ;  to  cutting 
roads  so  as  to  afford  a  continuous  means  of  communication 
for  their  own  troops  ;  and,  finally,  to  drawing  a  network  of 
telegraph  lines  in  all  directions.  Much  of  the  work  had  to 
be  done  by  night  in  order  to  avoid  the  merciless  hail  from 
the  enemy’s  forts.  An  elaborate  system  of  pickets  and 
out-posts,  and  of  special  and  general  reserves,  provided 
for  speedy  massing  of  troops  at  points  of  danger. 

Victorious  as  the  Germans  had  been,  their  position  now 
—  with  armies  forming  on  all  sides  of  them,  and  with 
French  francs  tireurs  extremely  active  —  was  far  from 
enviable.  It  was  found  necessary  to  detach  troops  in  all 
directions  to  protect  the  newly  drawn  lines.  Bismarck  and 
Roon  were  in  favor  of  hastening  matters  by  proceeding  to 
bombardment.  But  the  bringing  up  of  siege  guns  was  a 
slow  and  laborious  process,  and,  furthermore,  a  very  strong 
sentiment,  fostered  particularly  by  the  ladies  of  the  royal 
family,  against  inflicting  such  injury  on  the  most  beautiful 
city  in  the  world,  had  first  to  be  combatted.  Roon,  espe¬ 
cially,  chafed  against  this  delay  in  the  “  bombardment  of 
Babylon.”  “  The  Parisians  have  too  much  to  eat  and  too 
little  to  digest,”  he  wrote  in  November  —  “iron  pills, 
namely,  of  which  too  few  have  been  employed.  Though 
certain  female  intrigues  stand  in  our  way  here,  I  hope  that 


Wonderful 

German 

intrencli- 

ments 

around 

Paris. 


The  ques¬ 
tion  of 
bombard¬ 
ment. 


442 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  fall  of 
Metz. 


they  —  the  pills  —  will  take  effect;  it  would  be  too  great 
a  shame  to  let  all  the  glory  of  the  war  go  to  the  devil  in 
this  way.”  The  question  was  violently  discussed,  both  in 
the  field  and  at  home  in  Germany,  and  the  majority  were 
on  the  side  of  Bismarck  and  Roon.  Moltke,  who,  for  a 
time  at  least,  was  opposed  to  the  bombardment,  received 
the  following  characteristic  poem  :  — 

“  Lieber  Moltke ,  gehst  so  stumm 
Immer  urn  den  Brei  herum  ; 

Bester  Moltke ,  nimms  nicht  krumm, 

Mach  dock  endlich ,  bumm,  bumm ,  bumm ! 

Theurer  Moltke ,  schau  Bich  um  — 

Deutschland  will  das  bumm ,  bumm ,  bumm  /” 

But  the  delays  were  to  continue  until  Christmas  time. 
For  the  moment,  the  hope  of  the  besiegers  lay  in  drawing 
more  forces  from  Germany,  and  especially  in  the  prospec¬ 
tive  fall  of  Metz,  which  would  set  free  the  two  hundred 
thousand  men  under  Frederick  Charles. 

By  the  middle  of  October,  the  situation  of  affairs  in  the 
Lorraine  fortress  had  become  desperate.  In  the  one  great 
sally  which  had  taken  place  on  the  day  before  Sedan, 
for  the  purpose  of  forming  a  junction  with  MacMahon’s 
army,  and  which  had  cost  each  side  over  three  thousand 
men,  Bazaine  had  shown  himself  a  poor  commander. 
From  that  time  on  he  had  played  such  a  role  as  to 
give  ample  color  to  the  charges  of  treason  that  were 
later  brought  against  him.  The  besieging  army  was 
scarcely  greater  than  his  own,  and  must  have  had  points 
at  which  a  successful  attack  could  have  been  made.  But, 
—  whether  from  a  constitutional  lack  of  energy,  or,  as  was 
charged,  from  a  desire  to  keep  his  army  intact  in  order, 
later,  at  its  head,  to  play  a  more  important  political  role, 
the  commander  had  remained  strangely  inactive,  attempt- 


THE  RECKONING  WITH  FR4NCE 


443 


ing  only  operations  on  the  smallest  scale.  Early  in 
October,  he  entered  into  communication  with  Bismarck; 
who  would  have  allowed  the  army  to  go  free,  had  it  de¬ 
clared  for  the  Empress  Eugenie,  and  had  she  been  willing 
to  accept  the  German  terms  of  peace  and  call  an  assembly 
to  provide  a  new  government. 

Meanwhile,  the  sufferings  within  and  without  the  for¬ 
tress  grew  more  and  more  severe.  One-fifth  of  the  whole 
German  army  was  in  the  lazarettes  from  maladies  caused 
by  the  rains,  by  the  pestilential  vapors  from  the  uncov¬ 
ered  bodies,  by  the  unavoidable  monotony  of  the  fare  and 
the  want  of  good  drinking  water.  The  camps  had  become 
great  marshes,  the  improvised  shelters  proved  small  pro¬ 
tection.  Frequently  officers  and  men  spent  the  long  nights 
on  foot,  shivering  in  the  wet.  The  condition  of  the 
French,  however,  was  growing  desperate :  the  only  meat 
was  horseflesh,  and  the  horses  themselves  were  starving. 

They  had  eaten  all  the  bark  from  the  trees,  and  the  Ger¬ 
mans  could  see  them  in  the  barren  fields  tearing  at  each 
other’s  manes  and  tails.  Finally,  on  the  27th  of  October, 
after  long  attempting  to  gain  better  terms,  Bazaine  ran  up 
the  flag  of  truce,  and  handed  over  the  unprecedented  num¬ 
ber  of  3  marshals,  6000  officers,  173,000  men,  1500  cannon, 

72  mitrailleuses,  and  260,000  rifles.  This  immense  army 
was  sent  off  to  Germany,  and  French  wits  still  had  the 
heart  to  remark  that  Bazaine  and  MacMahon  had  at  last 
effected  their  junction. 

None  too  soon  was  the  army  of  Frederick  Charles  left  The  Loire 
free.  The  Bavarian  General  von  der  Tann  had  taken  Or-  camPaiSn- 
leans,  but,  soon  after,  at  Coulmiers,  had  fallen  in  with  a 
French  force  four  times  as  large  as  his  own,  and  had  been 
obliged  to  retire  with  a  loss  of  fifteen  hundred  men.  In¬ 
formation  of  the  victory,  couched  in  such  terms  as  to  fill 
the  hearts  of  the  people  with  joy  and  hope,  was  brought 


444 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  end  of 
Bourbaki. 


by  carrier  pigeon  to  Paris.  The  fortune  of  war  was  turn¬ 
ing,  proclaimed  Gambetta,  and  the  brethren  within  and 
without  the  walls  would  soon  join  hands  and  free  the  soil 
of  la  patrie.  But  Coulmiers  proved  of  no  strategical  ad¬ 
vantage,  and  the  army  of  Frederick  Charles,  after  defeat¬ 
ing  the  forces  of  Crouzat  at  Beaune-la-Rolande,  and  those 
of  Chanzy  at  Loigny  and  Bazoches,  dislodged  Aurelles 
from  Orleans. 

Into  the  countless  small  engagements,  with  the  different 
armies  that  were  attempting  to  relieve  Paris,  it  is  impos¬ 
sible  here  to  enter.  France  outdid  herself  in  these  months 
in  the  raising  of  troops.  Up  to  February,  1871,  it  was  reck¬ 
oned  that  she  had  armed  and  placed  in  the  field  1,898,000 
men.  But,  here,  the  German  reserve  and  Landwelir  system 
showed  its  immense  superiority  over  these  hasty  musterings 
of  untrained  youths.  Nowhere  were  the^  latter  successful 
save  at  Orleans:  not  at  Chateaudun,  Etival,  Ognon,  or 
Dijon  in  October;  not  at  Amiens  on  November  27 ;  not  at 
Beaugency  in  the  early  days  of  December,  although  they 
possessed  an  overwhelming  superiority  of  numbers  ;  not  on 
the  Hallue,  December  23  and  24 ;  not  at  Le  Mans  or  St. 
Quentin ;  not  at  Belfort  or  Villersexel.  More  than  once, 
the  odds  had  been  so  enormous  against  the  Germans  that 
Moltke,  although  he  countenanced  taking  the  risks,  asked 
the  king  not  to  blame  his  generals  if  they  should  fail. 
The  battle  that  took  place  at  Montbeliard,  in  the  middle  of 
January,  between  the  French  general,  Bourbaki,  and  Prus¬ 
sian  and  Baden  troops  under  Goltz  and  Werder,  was  one 
of  the  most  remarkable  of  the  war;  and  William  may  be 
pardoned  for  having  compared  it  to  the  greatest  feats  of 
arms  of  any  age.  Bourbaki  had  conceived  the  notion, 
fairly  astonishing  at  this  stage  of  the  conflict,  of  invading 
Baden  and  inflicting  all  the  injury  he  could.  With  only 
forty-three  thousand  men,  to  oppose  his  one  hundred  and 


THE  RECKONING  WITH  FRANCE  445 

thirty  thousand,  the  Germans  gave  him  battle  on  three 
successive  days  and  forced  him  to  retreat.  Manteuffel’s 
corps  lay  in  his  way,  and  Bourbaki  was  finally  obliged  to 
seek  refuge  near  Pontarlier,  on  Swiss  territory.  At  the 
news  of  his  intention  to  do  this,  he  was  deposed  from  the 
command  by  telegraph,  and  wounded  himself  in  an  attempt 
to  take  his  life.  His  successor,  Clinchant,  lost  fifteen  thou¬ 
sand  men  in  a  series  of  skirmishes.  Twenty  thousand  more 
had  escaped  in  small  detachments,  and  the  remaining  ninety 
thousand  were  disbanded  on  Swiss  territory. 

By  this  time  the  crisis  had  occurred  in  Paris,  though 
Favre,  expecting  great  things  from  Bourbaki,  had  exempted 
this  eastern  army  from  the  general  capitulation.  Late  in 
October,  Thiers,  returning  from  his  journey  to  the  differ¬ 
ent  courts,  had  made  renewed  efforts  to  effect  a  truce;  but 
had  failed,  because  the  Germans  refused  to  allow  the  re¬ 
provisioning  of  Paris,  save  in  exchange  for  Mont  Valerien, 
and  also  because  disturbances  within  the  city,  where  the 
radical  element  all  but  succeeded  in  gaining  the  upper 
hand,  showed  Thiers  himself  that  the  government  was  too 
unstable  to  make  a  lasting  treaty.  The  situation  of  the 
besieged  had  grown  appalling :  horsemeat,  even,  was  grow¬ 
ing  dear;  while  rats  were  selling  at  sixty  centimes  apiece. 
Almost  all  the  infants  had  died  for  want  of  milk,  and  the 
whole  death  rate  had  trebled  as  compared  with  the  same 
period  o|  the  previous  year.  The  alternations  of  hope 
and  fear  were  terrible.  The  frequent  sallies,  invariably 
unsuccessful,  were  costing  great  numbers  of  lives.  In 
Christmas  week  there  came  on  a  bitter,  unusual  cold; 
while  now,  at  last,  the  dissensions  at  the  German  head¬ 
quarters  with  regard  to  the  bombardment  had  been 
settled,  and  the  first  shells  began  to  burst  over  the  heads 
of  the  unhappy  people,  and  to  fall  in  the  gardens  of  the 
Luxemburg  and  in  the  Rue  St.  Jacques.  Mont  Avron 


Sufferings 
of  the 
Parisians. 


446 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  Con¬ 
vention  of 
Versailles. 


was  the  first  fortress  to  fall,  and  proved  a  valuable  acquisi¬ 
tion  for  the  Germans.  Some  fifty-six  thousand  shots  were 
fired  in  all,  and  fort  after  fort  was  gradually  silenced ;  though 
the  damage  in  the  city  was  comparatively  slight.  On  the 
19th  of  January  took  place  the  last  sortie :  one  hundred 
thousand  strong,  under  Ducrot,  Bellemare,  and  Yinoy,  the 
garrison  issued  forth.  But  many  hours  are  needed  for  such 
large  numbers  to  pass  through  a  narrow  space.  They  were 
driven  back  with  a  loss  of  seven  thousand,  and  the  doom  of 
the  city  sealed.  Its  own  factions  began  warring  amongst 
themselves.  Trochu  was  deposed  from  the  governorship 
of  Paris;  the  communists  freed  their  comrades  from  prison; 
while,  in  the  effort  to  put  them  down,  blood  was  shed. 

And  now  a  canvas  of  the  city  resulted  in  the  dreadful 
certainty  that  the  end  had  come,  and  that,  by  the  first 
week  of  February,  all  supplies  would  have  been  consumed. 
Authorized  by  his  government,  Jules  Favre  issued  forth 
,on  January  23,  and  was  granted  an  interview  with  Bis¬ 
marck  at  Versailles.  He  was  none  too  soon.  At  the  very 
same  time  agents  of  Napoleon  III.  were  negotiating  with 
the  chancellor  for  a  restoration  of  the  empire,  and  with 
every  chance  of  success.  Better  this  than  the  commune, 
although  the  republic  was  preferable  in  German  eyes  to 
either.  After  three  days  of  negotiating  with  Favre,  the 
armistice  was  agreed  to,  which  is  known  as  the  Convention 
of  Versailles  :  for  twenty-one  days  hostilities  were  to  cease, 
and  the  forts  were  to  be  garrisoned  by  Germans.  During 
this  time,  elections  were  to  be  held  and  an  assembly  to  be 
called  for  the  purpose  of  choosing  a  responsible  head  with 
whom  the  Germans  could  treat.  The  latter  were  to  help 
in  provisioning  the  starved  city,  but  were  not  to  enter  it. 
The  two  armies  were  to  keep  within  their  own  limits,  at  a 
distance  from  each  other  of  about  five  miles.  Although 
Gambetta  bitterly  opposed  the  truce  and  tried  to  spur  the 


THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  GERMAN  UNITY 


447 


people  on  to  fresh  resistance,  he  was  overruled.  The  Par¬ 
liament  came  together  within  the  allotted  time ;  and,  by 
the  so-called  Compact  of  Bordeaux,  chose  Thiers  as  execu¬ 
tive  head  of  the  French  Republic,  regardless  of  the  decision 
to  which  the  nation  might  come  with  respect  to  its  final 
form  of  government. 

On  ^ebruary  21  began  the  formal  negotiations  for  The  Treaty 
peace.  The  German  demands  were  Alsace  with  Belfort,  of  Frank_ 
a  portion  of  Lorraine  with  Metz,  and  a  war  indemnity  of  fort' 
six  billions  of  francs.  Thiers,  after  days  of  discussion,  in 
which  the  Frenchman  more  than  once  lost  his  temper 
and  used  abusive  language,  procured  the  remission  of  one 
billion  francs,  and  saved  Belfort  by  the  counter  concession 
that  the  German  troops  might  make  an  entry  into  Paris. 

This  agreement  was  reached"  on  February  26,  and  the 
final  treaty  of  peace  was  to  be  drawn  up  and  signed  at  a 
conference  to  be  held  in  Brussels.  As  a  matter  of  fact  it 
was  signed  in  Frankfort  on  the  10th  of  May.  On  the  1st 
of  March,  thirty  thousand  Germans  marched  into  Paris,  and 
occupied  the  southwestern  portion  of  the  city ;  but  with¬ 
drew  after  forty-eight  hours,  having  completed  the  formal 
humiliation  of  the  enemy. 

Long  before  this  the  Germans  had  celebrated  a  still  The  ques- 
greater  triumph  over  an  enemy  that  had  been  besetting  them  tion  of 
since  the  days  of  the  Hohenstaufens  —  over  the  wretched  ^rt^an 
dissensions  that  had  so  long  prevented  them  from  acting  as 
one  nation.  What  Charlemagne,  what  the  Ottos  and  the 
Fredericks,  had  found  impossible, — the  consolidating  of 
their  empire  in  such  form  that  its  crown  could  be  handed 
down,  without  disturbance,  from  father  to  son,  —  was  now 
to  be  achieved.  The  people  had  been  educated  to  it  by 
centuries  of  bitter  experiences;  the  way  had  been  prepared 
for  it  by  unparalleled  successes  in  the  field,  and  by  a  broad 
statesmanship,  the  like  of  which  had  rarely  been  seen. 


448 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Conces¬ 
sions  to 
Bay  aria. 


After  the  very  first  victories  in  August  and  September, 
the  question  had  been  broached  of  admitting  the  South 
German  states  into  the  North  German  Confederation, 
Baden,  bound  by  family  ties  to  the  court  of  Prussia,  was 
a  prime  mover  in  the  affair ;  but  the  real  inspiration  came 
from  Bismarck.  During  the  siege  of  Paris,  there  had  been 
a  busy  coming  and  going  of  envoys  at  Versailles.  There 
had  been  talk,  indeed,  of  holding  a  federal  Diet  on  French 


soil. 

Baden  and  Hesse  made  the  least  difficulty  and  were  the 
first  to  hand  in  their  allegiance,  Bavaria  wished  the  federal 
constitution  changed  in  no  less  than  eighty  points  before 
she  would  subscribe  to  it,  and  Wiirtemberg  held  her  in 
countenance.  But  Bismarck  could  afford  to  wait;  —  which 
was  more  than  could  be  said  of  the  Bavarian  ministers,  see¬ 
ing  that  they  had  against  them  on  the  one  hand  their  own 
king,  on  the  other  public  opinion.  Gradually  the  demands 
were  pared  down  to  a  degree  which  made  them  acceptable, 
though  not  palatable,  to  the  Parliament  of  the  confedera¬ 
tion.  Indeed,  but  for  Bismarck’s  threat  of  resigning  the 
chancellorship  at  this  the  moment  of  his  greatest  glory,  it 
is  doubtful  if  the  treaties  would  have  been  passed. 

“  Unity  at  any  price  ”  was  now  the  watchword  of  Prussian 
diplomacy.  For  that  reason  Bavaria  was  allowed  to  have 
six  votes  in  the  new  confederation  —  a  number  very  much 
larger  in  proportion  to  the  population  than  Prussia’s  seven¬ 
teen.  For  that  reason,  although  retaining  her  right  to  veto 
any  modification  of  the  military  and  naval  arrangements, 
Prussia  agreed  never  to  make  war  without  the  sanction  of 
the  federal  council.  Bavaria  retained  the  exclusive  control 
of  her  army  in  time  of  peace,  of  her  railroad,  postal,  and 
telegraph  systems,  of  legislation  regarding  the  remunerative 
industry  of  beer-brewing;  and  was  also  accorded  some  two 
dozen  minor  privileges. 


THE  ATTAINMENT  OF  GERMAN  UNITY 


449 


Just  when  and  where  the  idea  of  turning  the  German  The  ques- 
confederation  into  a  German  empire  originated  is  not  t*on  an 
clear.  The  crown  prince,  in  the  diary  that  was  surrepti-  em^re* 
tiously  published  after  his  death,  shows  that  much  of  the 
credit  should  be  ascribed  to  himself ;  and  certainly  he  did 
much  in  persuading  his  father  to  allow  the  time-honored 
title  of  “King  of  Prussia,”  to  which  he  clung  so  passion¬ 
ately,  to  be  overshadowed.  But  the  kind  of  empire  the 
crown  prince  wanted  was  somewhat  different  from  that 
which  was  finally  brought  into  being.  His  plan  would  have 
tended  to  reduce  the  minor  sovereigns  to  peers  in  an  upper 
house,  and  would  have  brought  them  to  submission,  event¬ 
ually  by  force.  The  chancellor,  with  better  foresight,  was 
determined  that  the  initiative  should  come  from  the  states 
themselves,  and  it  was  he  who  prevailed  on  the  king  of 
Bavaria  to  personally  suggest  the  change  of  title. 

Bismarck  argued  that  it  was  more  consistent  for  a  Bismarck 
king  of  Bavaria  to  renounce  rights  to  an  emperor  than  to  wishes  a 
a  king;  and  he  actually  drew  up  the  draft  of  the  letter  that  E^p™jD„ 
Louis,  on  December  4,  addressed  to  William.  On  the 
latter,  too,  who  cared  not  the  least  for  the  imperial  title, 
and  would  gladly  have  remained  merely  president  of  the 
confederation,  Bismarck  brought  to  bear  all  his  powers  of 
persuasion:  44  Your  Majesty  will  not  always  remain  a 
neuter  —  das  Praesidium  ?  ”  he  said  to  him  on  one  occasion. 

To  the  very  last  the  Prussian  king  made  difficulties  : 
at  all  events  he  would  be  “  Emperor  of  Germany,”  not 
4  German  Emperor,”  he  declared — Emperor  of  Germany  or 
nothing  at  all.  To  this,  Bismarck  objected  that  it  would 
involve  a  claim  to  non-Prussian  territory ;  that  the  king 
of  Bavaria  had  expressly  invited  him  to  become  44  German 
Emperor  ”  ;  that  the  federal  council  had  used  this  designa¬ 
tion  in  altering  the  old  constitution  to  suit  the  new  cir¬ 
cumstances;  and  that  the  minor  German  sovereigns  would 

VOL.  II  —  2  G  I 


450 


The  procla¬ 
mation  at 
Versailles. 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

be  very  likely  to  make  difficulties.  The  discussion  grew 
very  stormy,  and  the  old  king  lost  his  temper,  and  brought 
his  hand  down  heavily  upon  the  table. 

With  the  matter  still  unsettled,  the  morning  of  the  18th 
of  January  dawned  —  the  anniversary  of  the  first  corona¬ 
tion  of  a  Prussian  king,  the  day  that  had  been  set  aside 
for  proclaiming  the  empire.  “How  are  you  going  to 
name  the  new  emperor  ?  ”  asked  Bismarck,  just  before  the 
ceremony,  of  the  Grand  Duke  of  Baden,  who  was  to  read 
the  solemn  announcement.  u  Emperor  of  Germany,  accord¬ 
ing  to  his  Majesty’s  command!  was  the  reply;  but  the 
chancellor,  who  relates  the  scene  in  his  memoirs,  prevailed 
upon  him  to  return  once  more  to  the  attack.  At  the  last 
moment  his  Majesty  gave  in,  but  took  the  interference  so  ill 
that  he  publicly  slighted  his  mentor  as  he  entered  the  hall, 
and,  walking  past  him,  shook  hands  with  the  generals 
behind.  The  forts  of  Paris  were  belching  forth  their  last 
defiant  shots  as  the  Hohenzollern  raised  the  crown  of  a 
united  fatherland  and  placed  it  upon  his  own  head. 

The  coolness  with  the  chancellor  lasted  but  a  moment. 
These  two  men  — the  strong,  dignified,  benevolent  king, 
and  the  statesman  endowed  with  wisdom  and  foresight  — 
were  born  to  supplement  each  other’s  work.  It  was  a 
combination,  an  alliance  that  put  an  end,  in  Germany,  to 
the  anarchy  of  ages.  Had  William  been  an  absolute 
autocrat  like  Frederick  the  Great,  or  had  he,  on  the  other 
hand,  been  merely  a  figure-head,  it  is  difficult  to  see  how 
German  unity  could  have  been  accomplished.  But  fortu¬ 
nately  he  possessed  the  very  qualities  that  made  all  Ger¬ 
mans  willing  to  accept  his  leadership,  while  Bismarck 
showed  the  strength  of  a  Hercules  in  levelling  the  super¬ 
vening  obstacles. 


CHAPTER  XI 

POLITICAL  DEVELOPMENTS  FROM  1871  TO  1914 

» 

Literature  :  The  most  illuminating  study  of  the  period  from 
1871  to  1890  is  Klein-Hattingen,  Bismarck  und  seine  Welt,  3  vols. 

A  good  short  biography  of  Bismarck  is  that  by  Lenz.  See  also 
Egelhaaf,  Geschichte  der  Neuesten  Zeit.  For  the  period  from  1888 
to  1913  we  have  the  monumental  composite  work  Deutschland  unter 
Kaiser  Wilhelm  II.,  of  which  Vol.  I.  deals  with  the  political  history. 

The  new  Handhuch  der  Politik,  too,  is  useful  for  reference.  A  good 
narrative  history  of  the  reign  of  William  II.  is  Felix  Rachfahl,  Kaiser 
und  Reich  1888-1913. 

“  May  the  German  imperial  war  which  we  have  carried  The  first 
through  with  such  renown  be  followed  by  a  peace  for  the  Reichstag 
Empire  no  less  glorious,  and,  from  now  on,  may  the  German  opened- 
people  confine  their  efforts  to  winning  victories  in  the  field 
of  peaceful  enjoyments.  May  God  so  ordain !” 

With  these  words  William  I.  concluded  his  speech  from 
the  throne  at  the  opening  of  the  first  Reichstag  on  March  21, 

1871.  The  scene  was  one  of  unwonted  pomp  and  glitter,  the 
formal  reception  of  the  members  taking  place  in  the  famous 
White  Hall  of  the  royal  castle  at  Berlin.  The  custom  had 
been  revived  of  having  the  great  officials  do  homage  by  per¬ 
forming  the  duties  attached  to  their  posts,  although  no  im¬ 
perial,  but  only  royal,  insignia  were  available.  Austria,  so 
recently  humbled,  could  not  well  be  asked  to  hand  out  the 
crown,  orb,  sceptre  and  sword  of  the  old  Holy  Roman  Empire 
which  were  reposing  in  Vienna.  So  Count  Moltke  bore  the 
sword  of  the  old  Kings  of  Prussia,  Count  Redern  their  crown. 

General  von  Peuker  their  orb,  and  Minister  von  Roon  their 
sceptre,  while  old  Count  Wrangel  followed  with  a  banner. 

451 


a 


452 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The 

Reichstag 

building. 


Festivities 
in  Berlin. 


The  throne,  it  was  said,  had  belonged  to  the  old  Saxon  em¬ 
perors  of  the  eleventh  and  twelfth  centuries  and  had  been 
obtained  from  a  collector  in  Goslar. 

The  first  regular  session  of  the  Reichstag  took  place  in  the 
old  Zollverein  building  on  the  Donhoffs-Platz,  no  provision 
as  yet  having  been  made  for  permanently  housing  the  assem¬ 
blage,  which  numbered  nearly  four  hundred.  The  question  of 
new  quarters  was  immediately  taken  up  and  the  result  of  the 
debates  showed  a  modest,  serious  spirit.  A  member  by  the 
name  of  Smith  had  advocated  an  elaborate  building  to  be  set 
in  a  park  on  the  bank  of  the  Spree.  The  question  of  money, 
another  member  had  declared,  ought  not  to  enter  into  the 
matter;  to  which  a  Progressive  retorted  that  future  ages 
would  approve  great  decrees  passed  in  plain  halls;  they  should 
not,  however,  be  in  a  position  to  say  :  “  My  God,  the  building 
is  magnificent  but  the  decrees  leave  something  to  be  de¬ 
sired!”  This  remark  doubtless  contributed  to  the  result 
that  for  twenty-three  years  the  German  imperial  Reichstag 
was  to  sit  in  the  old  show-rooms  of  the  royal  porcelain  manu¬ 
factory  on  the  Leipzigerstrasse.  The  transformation  of  the 
building  was  effected  in  one  short  summer,  a  task  which  the 
German  architects  had  declared  impossible.  “All  right,” 
Bismarck  had  said  angrily,  “I  shall  send  to  London  for 
builders  !”  The  director  of  the  porcelain  works  was  induced 
to  hasten  his  exit  by  the  threat  that  whatever  remained  after 
three  days  would  be  thrown  into  the  street. 

Berlin  was  in  a  tumult  of  gayety  and  hopefulness.  For 
the  first,  and  last,  time  the  Emperor  invited  the  Reichstag 
in  a  body  to  dine  in  the  palace,  where,  with  other  guests,  they 
sat  down  to  table  six  hundred  strong.  The  court  appeared, 
too,  at  a  great  function  in  the  Rathaus,  given  in  the  Reichs¬ 
tag’s  honor,  for  which  a  thousand  invitations  had  been 
issued.  Eugene  Richter,  the  great  leader  of  the  “  Progress- 
party,”  has  left  us  fascinating  glimpses  of  Bismarck  escaping 


f 


POLITICAL  DEVELOPMENTS  FROM  1871  TO  1914  453 


I 


i 


« 


I 

< 

1 

j 

I 

j 


from  the  royal  ladies,  who  held  court  until  the  guests  were 
half-starved,  and  being  conducted  by  city-councillors  to  their 
own  particular  assembly-room,  where  beer  was  on  tap ;  and 
of  the  Kaiser  pausing  at  the  head  of  the  stairs  that  led  to  the 
refreshment  rooms  and  smiling  back  at  the  hungry,  struggling 
deputies  who  followed  him. 

There  was  every  apparent  reason  for  rejoicing.  The  five 
billion  francs  which  the  French  had  been  obliged  to  promise 
as  a  war  indemnity  seemed  to  assure  endless  prosperity ;  the 
National  Liberals,  placated  by  universal  suffrage  and  hand 
in  glove  with  Bismarck,  had  double  the  number  of  representa¬ 
tives  in  the  Reichstag  of  any  other  party,  and  though  the 
ultra-conservatives  resented  the  merging  of  Prussia  in  Ger¬ 
many,  that  question  was  not  likely  to,  and  did  not,  become 
a  vital  issue. 

All  the  same  before  many  weeks  had  passed  Prussia  and 
the  empire  were  obliged  to  take  up  a  struggle  for  supremacy 
in  a  matter  in  which  millions  of  their  own  subjects  were  solidly 
arrayed  against  them.  It  is  astonishing  how  like  was  4his 
Kulturkampf,  or  struggle  for  religious  and  educational  ideals, 
to  that  old  bitter  conflict  of  the  eleventh  and  twelfth  cen¬ 
turies  when  Gregory  VII.  and  his  successors  claimed  control 
of  episcopal  elections  in  Germany.  That  conflict  was  in  the 
mind  of  every  one  now,  and  Bismarck  scored  one  of  the  hits 
of  his  career  when  he  cried  out  in  the  Reichstag,  “We  won’t 
go  to  Canossa!”  In  those  few  words  he  conjured  up  the 
image  of  a  German  emperor,  barefoot  and  in  penitent’s 
garb,  humbly  waiting  in  the  snow,  before  the  closed  gates 
that  guarded  an  obdurate  pope,  for  the  absolution  that  his 
own  princes  had  required  him  to  obtain.  A  marble  monu¬ 
ment  on  the  Harzburg,  whence  Henry  IV.  started  on  his  pil¬ 
grimage,  has  perpetuated  Bismarck’s  utterance,  though 
many  believe  that  the  great  chancellor  was  not  true  to  his 
promise  and  did  go  to  Canossa  after  all ! 


Causes  for 
rejoicing. 


“We 
wont  go 
to 

Canossa.” 


The 

Centre 

party. 


Wind¬ 

horst. 


The 

church’s 

position. 


454  A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

The  part  of  the  rebellious  Saxon  prince  of  Henry  IV.’s 
time  was  played  in  the  new  struggle  by  the  Centre  party, 
represented  both  in  Prussian  diet  and  the  German  Reichstag. 
It  was  made  up  of  delegates  from  the  Roman  Catholic  states 
and  from  the  Prussian  Rhenish,  Westphalian,  and  Polish 
provinces.  The  cry  had  gone  forth  that  the  church  was  in 
peril  and  the  party  had  secured  next  to  the  largest  repre¬ 
sentation  in  the  Reichstag  —  57  seats  as  compared  with 
116  of  the  National  Liberals.  Its  most  noted  members  were 
Windhorst,  von  Mallinckrodt,  and  the  two  brothers  Reichen- 
sperger.  In  the  long  run  Windhorst  was  to  cast  all  others  in 
the  shade,  and  he  and  Bismarck  stand  forth  as  the  acknowl¬ 
edged  protagonists  of  their  respective  sides.  Windhorst’s 
great  assets  were  his  coolness  in  debate,  his  quickness  and 
readiness,  his  unfailing  memory,  and  above  all  his  power  of 
drawing  a  laugh  to  the  disadvantage  of  his  opponent. 

The  details  of  the  Kulturkampf  can  merely  be  summarized 
here.  The  whole  episode  is  one  of  the  most  complicated  in 
German  history.  Even  the  combatants  in  the  struggle  are 
changing  all  the  time.  Now  it  is  the  Pope,  now  the  Jesuit 
order,  now  the  German  episcopacy,  now  the  Centre  party 
that  represents  the  claims  of  the  church;  again  it  is  the 
Reichstag,  or  again  the  Prussian  Diet,  or  still  again  the  gov¬ 
ernment  of  Hesse  or  of  Baden,  that  brings  up  counter  claims. 
Bismarck  is  called  upon  to  act  at  one  moment  as  chancellor, 
the  next  in  his  capacity  as  presiding  minister  of  the  Prussian 
cabinet,  which  last  position,  again,  he  resigns  for  a  time. 
We  meet  the  German  bishops  themselves,  first  as  opponents 
of  the  infallibility  dogma,  then  as  opponents  of  such  of  their 
own  clergy  as  refuse  to  accept  it.  The  very  leader  of  the 
revolt  later  returns  to  the  fold,  hoping,  as  he  declared,  to 
leaven  the  lump.  The  questions  at  issue,  too,  change  from 
time  to  time.  Infallibility  fades  into  the  background. 
Episcopal  elections,  control  of  schools,  jurisdiction  over  ec- 


t 


POLITICAL  DEVELOPMENTS  FROM  1871  TO  1914  455 

clesiastical  offenders,  civil  marriage :  these  and  other  matters 
alternate  in  coming  to  the  fore.  Ever  in  the  background  is 
the  matter  of  ultimate  authority  —  the  old,  old  conflict  be¬ 
tween  rendering  unto  Caesar  the  things  that  are  Caesar's, 
and  unto  God  the  things  that  are  God’s. 

To  appreciate  the  full  bitterness  of  the  struggle  one  must  re¬ 
member  the  church’s  plight  at  the  time,  with  its  temporal  pos¬ 
sessions  taken  away  from  it  by  Italy,  with  its  most  apostolic 
and  most  Christian  allies,  Austria  and  France,  defeated  in  suc¬ 
cessive  wars  by  a  Protestant  power,  and  with  only  a  spiritual 
realm  and  the  doctrine  of  infallibility  to  which  to  cling.  The 
fight  was  entered  into  with  great  courage.  Bismarck  once 
wrote  that  the  Pope’s  endeavor  was  “to  control  episcopal 
affairs  in  every  single  diocese  and  to  substitute  papal  power 
for  that  of  the  state”  and  that  the  German  bishops  had  been 
about  to  become  “papal  tools,  officials  of  a  monarch  more 
absolute  than  any  other  in  the  world.” 

It  was  on  July  18,  1870,  that  Pius  IX.,  “servant  of  the 
servants  of  God,”  proclaimed  his  “dogmatic  constitution 
concerning  the  church  of  Christ”  as  a  result  of  the  Vatican 
council’s  decrees.  The  Prussian  representative  in  Rome, 
Count  Arnim,  had  already  uttered  a  warning  as  to  what  the 
council’s  deliberations  portended.  He  had  declared  that,  in 
consequence  of  the  new  dogmas,  the  new  conception  of  the 
papal  power,  a  church  would  result,  different  from  the  one 
protected  by  the  Prussian  constitution,  and  had  prophesied 
that  the  episcopal  sees  would  be  vacant  and  that  the  schools 
would  divorce  themselves  from  religion.  Nevertheless,  in 
August  an  assemblage  of  German  bishops  issued  a  pastoral 
letter  ordering  their  clergy  and  all  the  faithful  to  accept  the 
Vatican  decrees. 

Then  came  revolt.  Dollinger,  the  influential  professor  of 
theology  at  the  University  of  Munich,  organized  a  protest ; 
and,  in  a  document  known  as  the  Nuremberg  declaration. 


Dollinger’s 

revolt. 


456 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The 

Bonn 

faculty. 


Hostilities 
between 
church 
and  state. 


the  decrees  of  the  council  were  repudiated  as  ruinous  to  the 
Episcopacy  and  subversive  of  social  order.  “As  a  Chris¬ 
tian,  as  a  theologian,  as  a  historian,  and  as  a  citizen,”  wrote 
Dollinger,  “  I  am  obliged  to  reject  these  teachings.”  He  was 
promptly  excommunicated,  but  his  university  showed  its 
sympathy  by  electing  him  to  be  its  head.  Meanwhile,  on 
September  20th,  Italian  troops  occupied  Rome  and  the  last 
vestiges  of  the  Pope’s  temporal  power  were  swept  away. 

Many  German  Catholics  considered  it  their  duty  to  work 
for  the  restoration  of  that  power,  and,  in  an  assembly  at 
Fulda,  called  on  the  governments  of  Europe  to  interfere : 
“  If  they  will  not  perceive  their  duty,”  the  assembly  pro¬ 
claimed,  “  then  their  Catholic  subjects  must  jog  their  minds  !  ” 
The  Archbishop  of  Cologne  helped  to  fan  the  flame  by  order¬ 
ing  the  Catholic  professors  in  the  theological  faculty  at  Bonn 
to  sign  an  acceptance  of  the  dogma  of  infallibility.  Who¬ 
ever  refused  was  forbidden  to  perform  the  sacred  rites,  and 
no  Catholic  student  might  attend *his  lectures.  Such  an  in¬ 
terference  with  academic  liberty  was  bitterly  resented  ;  the 
university  appealed  to  the  minister  for  education  and  the 
latter  answered  that  professors  were  state  officials  and  that 
episcopal  dictation  would  not  be  tolerated. 

And  so  the  cleft  went  on  widening.  The  Bollinger  party, 
or  the  “old  Catholics”  as  they  now  called  themselves,  held 
a  congress,  set  up  their  own  ritual,  and  opened  their  own 
parishes.  The  partisans  of  infallibility,  on  the  other  hand, 
boldly  thundered  away  at  the  government  from  their  pulpits. 
The  Reichstag  then  passed  its  famous  “pulpit  paragraph” 
making  it  a  state-prison  offence  to  endanger  the  public  peace 
by  agitation  or  discussion  in  the  churches.  There  was  no 
relenting  on  Bismarck’s  part.  He  saw  to  it  that  a  stern,  firm 
man,  Adalbert  Falk,  was  made  Prussian  Kultusminister ,  or 
minister  of  education  and  religion,  and  Falk’s  first  act  was  to 
take  the  control  of  the  schools  from  the  hands  of  the  clergy,  a 


4 


POLITICAL  DEVELOPMENTS  FROM  1871  TO  1914  457 


{ 


j 

: 


I 

I 


measure  that  was  opposed  both  by  the  Centrists  and  the  Con¬ 
servatives.  In  order  to  pass  it  in  the  Prussian  Upper  House'  a 
whole  batch  of  new  peers  had  to  be  created  by  the  emperor. 
Conspiracy,  real  or  imagined,  was  laid  at  the  door  of  the 
Catholics ;  German  unity  was  declared  to  be  at  stake.  Much 
was  made  of  the  Pope’s  refusal  to  accept  as  Prussian  envoy 
to  the  Vatican  one  of  his  own  cardinals,  Plohenlohe,  who, 
however,  was  an  opponent  of  infallibility.  Bismarck’s  bold¬ 
est  move,  and  the  one  that  reminds  one  most  of  the  Canossa 

m 

days,  was  to  send  a  circular  despatch  to  Germany’s  foreign 
representatives  telling  them  to  sound  the  governments  to 
which  they  were  accredited  on  the  desirability  of  pledging 
any  new  pope-elect  to  certain  conditions  and  refusing  to 
recognize  him  otherwise.  Brought  to  the  Pope’s  notice  this 
despatch  did  not  help  to  mend  matters. 

As  time  went  on  blows  more  and  more  hammer-like  were 
dealt,  the  conflict  raging  with  the  greatest  intensity  between 
1872  and  1875.  Bismarck  once  declared  that  the  Rultur- 
kampf  was  but  one  in  the  series  of  struggles  that  had  begun 
when  Agamemnon  at  Aulis,  in  conflict  with  his  augurs,  had 
to  make  the  sacrifice  of  his  daughter,  and  that  had  lacerated 
the  German  Empire  during  the  Middle  Ages.  The  Prussian 
state  was  in  peril  and  had  to  fight  for  its  existence  threatened 
by  the  greed  of  the  church.  The  Jesuit  order,  root  and 
branch,  was  expelledjfrom  German  territory ;  the  Prussian 
constitutj^was^amcndcd  so  as  to  permit  of  severer  measures. 
The  famous^May  laws,”  finally,  deprived*- the  Prussian 
bishoj^j^much^of_their  power  j^y^r  tho-clergy  as  well  as 
limiting  thdx Jnfin p pee  over  the  laity,  gave  new  disciplinary 
powsi^J^tij^g^  required  young  ecclesiastics  to 

have  studied  for  three  years  at  a  German  university  before 
being  ordained  priest,  and  directed  that  ecclesiastical 
offenders  should  be  tried  in  the  ordinary  secular  courts. 

One  can  imagine  the  bitter  protests  called  forth  by  such 


The  May 
laws. 


458 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  G  IANY 


Retalia¬ 
tion  and 
reprisals. 


<v 


measures ;  the  hatred,  the  fierce  denu  tions.  The  Prus¬ 
sian  bishops  flatly  refused  to  carry  oi  ie  May  laws.  It 
was  a  heathen  principle,  they  declared,  that  the  law  of  the 
state  should  be  the  last  resort  in  matters  of  justice.  Pius  IX. 
spoke  openly  of  the  German  “persecution.”  He  even  had 
an  acrimonious  exchange  of  letters  with  the  emperor  in  which 
he  declared  that  every  baptized  person  was  under  his,  the 
Pope’s,  authority.  William  I.  answered  him  in  kind.  Can¬ 
didates  for  bishoprics  were  now  obliged  to  take  a  special  oath 
that  they  would  obey  the  state  laws,  while  prosecutions  on 
the  one  hand  were  answered  by  excommunication  on  the 
other.  A  measure  most  distasteful  to  the  church  was  the 
introduction.  oL  civil  |  marriage,  —  not  even  ^optional  but 
as  obligatory ;  thiTwas  robbing  the  church  ^L^gacrament. 
"New  Prussian  laws  concerning,  church  property,  too,  cut  very 
deep.  In  Febr.iIarypl8L5<..Pius  isi&li^ted  with  an  encyclic, 
declaring  such  laws jns^alid  and  forbidding  Catholics  to  obey 
them ;  nor  might  CatholmsJ^J^j^arC3KJeI|giou&  cdebrations 
conducted  by  priests  who  had  taken,  the  oath  which  the  state 
required.  And  so  matters  went  on  with  little  slackening  un¬ 
til  the  death  of  Pius  in  1878. 

Bismarck  had  drawn  down  upon  himself  an  avalanche  of 
personal  hatred.  That  there  were  violent  conflicts  with  the 
Centre  both  in  the  Reichstag  and  the  Diet  goes  without  say- 

Bismare^6  inS*  Then  Came  an  attemPt  to  assassinate  him  in  the  street 

at  Kissingen,  where  he  was  fired  upon  by  a  certain  Kullmann, 
July,  1874.  He  made  capital  out  of  the  affair  and  used  it  as 
a  ground  for  greater  and  gi  t  severity  against  the  Catho- 


The 

attempt 

to 


lies.  The  Centre  took  the 
irresponsible  person  and  p 
of  his  act,  but  Bismarck, 
party  like  a  tiger:  the  pr 
called  the  murderer  half-wit 


itude  that  Kullmann  was  an 
sted  against  the  exploitation 
he  Reichstag,  turned  on  the 
us  speaker,  he  declared,  had 
Such  was  not  the  case,  he 


begged  to  inform  him.  I  that  he  believed  there  was 


POLITICAL  DEVELOPMENTS  FROM  1871  TO  1914  459 


direct  collusion  between  the  speaker  and  the  murderer : 

“  Even  in  his  inmost  soul  the  former  speaker  will  surely 
never  have  cherished  the  wish:  ‘if  only  something  might 
happen  to  this  Chancellor  ! ’  [Laughter].  I  am  convinced  that 
such  a  thought  will  never  have  crossed  his  mind  [laughter].” 

And  then  fiercely  :  “  But  repudiate  this  murderer  as  you  will, 
nevertheless  he  does  cling  to  your  coat-tails.  He  calls  you 
his  party!”  Amid  a  storm  of  indignation  Bismarck  went 
on  to  declare  that  the  man  had  said  to  him  personally,  “You 
have  insulted  my  party!”  The  Centre  jeered.  “I  asked, 

'Which  is  your  party?’  Whereupon  he  said  to  me  before 
witnesses:  ‘The  Centre  party  in  the  Reichstag  !’ ”  Here 
there  were  wild  cries  of  “Pfui!”  from  the  Centre;  but  Bis¬ 
marck  continued :  “  ‘  Pfui  ’  is  an  expression  of  scorn  and 

disgust.  Do  not  think,  Gentlemen,  that  I  am  immune  from 
such  feelings.  But  I  am  too  polite  to  express  them.”  And 
he  repeated  his  charge  that  the  murderer  clung  to  the  coat¬ 
tails  of  his  party. 

All  the  same,  with  the  death  of  Pius  IX.  the  Kulturkampf  Attempts 
had  spent  its  fury.  The  new  Pope,  Leo  XIII.,  sent  an  amiably  to  assas- 
worded  notification  of  his  election  to  Emperor  William.  s*nate  the 
But  just  at  this  juncture  events  suddenly  precipitated  an 
equally  fierce  struggle  of  another  kind.  There  came  an  at¬ 
tempt  on  the  life  of  the  emperor  by  an  ex-member  of  the 
social  democratic  party,  which  proved  unsuccessful.  Bis¬ 
marck  brought  in  severe  anti-socialist  laws  which,  however, 
were  not  passed  by  the  Reichstag.  Then  came  a  second 
attempt  at  assassination,  more  serious,  for  in  full  view  of  the 
passers  by,  on  Unter  den  Linden,  a  charge  of  shot  was  lodged 
in  the  emperor’s  neck  and  arm.  At  once  Bismarck  dissolved 
the  Reichstag,  hastily  summoned  a  new  one,  and  passed  the 
most  drastic  of  laws. 

The  strength  of  social  democracy  lay  less  in  the  fact  of  its 
being  a  well-organized  political  party  than  in  that  of  its  tenets 


emperor. 


\ 


460 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  rise 
of  social 
democ¬ 
racy. 


Weitling. 


Marx  and 
Engels. 


having  become  a  veritable  religion.  As  in  the  case  of  many 
another  religion,  persecution  was  to  establish  it  all  the  more 
firmly.  Social  democracy  had  its  prophet  in  Wilhelm  Weit¬ 
ling,  its  Messiah  in  Karl  Marx,  its  John  the  disciple  in 
Friedrich  Engels,  its  apostle  Peter  in  Ferdinand  Lassalle,  and 
its  gospel  in  Marx’s  treatise  on  “Capital.”  At  the  time  of 
the  anti-socialist  laws,  Marx  and  Engels  were  still  alive,  but 
were  sojourning  in  foreign  lands.  Active  in  Germany,  how¬ 
ever,  was  August  Bebel.  Under  arrest  at  the  time  in  Saxony, 
he  had  been  elected  in  1871  as  sole  representative  for  the 
Socialist  party  in  the  Reichstag. 

We  must  dwell  for  a  moment  on  the  general  trend  of  the 
teachings  of  the  Socialists  in  order  to  understand  the  bitter 
antagonism  the  German  government  has  always  shown  tow¬ 
ards  them.  Weitling,  whose  ideas  created  a  considerable 
stir  in  his  day,  was  the  incarnation  of  the  revolutionary  spirit. 
He  had  belonged  to  the  most  radical  secret  society  in  Paris 
and  once  formulated  it  as  his  goal,  “  to  accustom  timid  diplo¬ 
mats,  magistrates,  and  petty  tradesmen  to  the  noise  of  the 
communistic  doctrine  just  as  the  sailor  becomes  accustomed  to 
the  washing  of  the  waves.”  He  was  the  kind  of  fanatic  that 
we  have  met  with  among  the  leaders  of  the  peasant  uprising 
of  the  sixteenth  century,  with  the  same  tendency  to  quote 
and  pervert  Scripture  and  the  same  belief  that  matters  could 
only  be  remedied  by  the  violent  overthrow  of  existing  condi¬ 
tions.  Weitling  carried  on  his  propaganda  on  two  conti¬ 
nents  and  died  in  New  York  in  1871. 

Marx  and  Engels,  too,  were  cosmopolites,  though  born 
on  the  Rhine.  Both  belonged  to  a  communistic  league  in 
Paris  and  both  assisted  in  drawing  up  the  programme  of  the 
communistic  congress  held  in  London  in  1847.  In  1848 
Marx  was  expelled  from  Prussia,  from  Paris,  and  from  Brus- 
sells,  and  took  up  his  permanent  residence  in  London.  From 
1864  to  his  death  in  1883  he  was  the  virtual  head  of  a  great 


POLITICAL  DEVELOPMENTS  FROM  1871  TO  1914  461 


international  labor  organization.  Marx  had  a  well-trained 
mind,  having  studied  in  his  youth  at  the  universities  of  Ber¬ 
lin  and  Bonn.  Social  and  economic  questions  had  always  in¬ 
terested  him ;  and  many  of  his  theories,  such  as  those  relating 
to  free  schooling,  progressive  taxation  and  national  industrial 
enterprises,  have  been  put  into  practice  with  great  success. 
It  is  his  attacks  on  such  conceptions  as  fatherland,  family, 
marriage,  and  religion  to  which  the  governments  have 
chiefly  objected  and  to  his  doctrine  that  relief  from  all  the 
evils  “  can  only  be  obtained  by  the  violent  overthrow  of  the 
whole  existing  social  order.”  According  to  Marx’s  gospel, 
society  falls  apart  into  but  two  main  categories,  the  plun- 
derers  and  the  plundered.  Landowners  should  bn  expro¬ 
priated  and  all  rents  should  flow  into  the  state  treasury ;  the 


state,  too,  should,  control  a 


credit, 


while  the  yrhole^inhent.ance  system  should  be  abolished.  This 
process  will  be  simplified  by  an  inevitable  tendency  or  the 
rich  to  grow  richer  and  the  rest  of  mankind  to  grow  poorer  — 
a  famous  theory  to  which  events  have  given  the  lie. 

Ferdinand  Lassalle  was  more  of  a  practical  agitator  than  Lassalle. 
Marx.  To  him  the  laboring  class  is  “  the  rock  on  which  the 
church  of  to-day  is  to  be  established.”  His  “open  answer,” 
published  in  1863,  has  been  designated  “the  foundation  char¬ 
ter  of  German  social  democracy”;  and  indeed  his  “general 
German  working  man’s  association”  was  later  formally 
merged  into  the  larger  organization.  Some  of  his  ideas,  too, 
have  lived :  universal  suffrage,  electoral  reform,  cooperative 
associations.  Lassalle  was  so  influential  that  Bismarck  is 
said  at  one  time  to  have  sought  his  alliance,  but  the  man  was 
unbalanced  and  finally  was  killed  in  a  duel  after  a  sordid  af¬ 
fair  with  a  woman. 

At  the  time  of  the  elections  to  the  first  Reichstag  the 
Lassalle  adherents  and  those  of  Marx  were  at  daggers  drawn, 
but  in  Gotha  in  1875  the  two  factions  composed  their  differ- 


462 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  begin¬ 
nings  of 
the  Social 
Demo¬ 
cratic 
party. 


Bismarck 
and  the 
Social 
Demo¬ 
crats. 


Severe 

measures 

against 

Social 

Demo¬ 

crats. 


ences  and  the  steady  rise  of  social  democracy  began.  In 
1877  the  party  polled  a  vote  of  493,000  and  returned  twelve 
members  to  the  Reichstag.  Trades-unionism  was  flourish¬ 
ing  simultaneously,  the  majority  of  the  trades-unionists  being 
Social  Democrats.  Wider  and  wider  was  the  appeal  made 
by  the  party’s  programme,  which  included  an  eight-hour  day, 
progressive  taxes,  the  right  of  the  people  to  decide  on  war  or 
peace,  and  better  labor  conditions  for  women  and  children. 

Bismarck  maintained  that  his  enmity  to  social  democracy 
began  on  the  day  when  he  heard  Bebel  in  the  Reichstag  de¬ 
fend  the  Paris  communists  of  1871  and  declare  that  their 
battle-cry  “wa£  on  palaces,  peace  to  huts,  death  to  misery 
and  idleness”  would  soon  be  the  battle-cry  of  the  whole 
European  proletariat.  He  tried  to  have  it  made  a  criminal 
offence  to  print  attacks  on  such  foundations  of  public  order 
as  the  sanctity  of  family  ties  and  the  ownership  of  property, 
but  failed  to  win  the  Reichstag  for  the  measure,  even  though 
he  eloquently  prophesied  the  coming  of  the  day  when  good 
citizens  would  long  for  such  legislation  as  the  lonely  pacer 
in  a  treadmill  longs  for  a  swallow  of  water.”  The  draft  of  the 
,  law  that  he  presented  after  the  first  attempt  on  the  emperor’s 
life  took  away  freedom  of  the  press  and  the  right  to  hold  as¬ 
semblies.  This  proposition,  as  we  know,  was  voted  down. 
But  after  Nobiling  had  succeeded  in  actually  wounding  the 
emperor  there  were  no  bounds  to  the  indignation  against  the 
Social  Democrats,  although  Nobiling  could  in  no  way  be  iden¬ 
tified  with  the  latter. 

Now  began  a  time  of  ostracism  and  proscription.  The 
police  were  authorized  to  suppress  all  “social  democratic, 
socialistic,  or  communistic”  gatherings  and  all  publications 
that  “tended  to  undermine  the  existing  political  and  social 
order.”  The  door  was  thus  opened  for  a  regular  persecu¬ 
tion.  Berlin,  in  addition,  was  pronounced  in  a  state  of  petty 
siege ;  and,  literally,  if  three  persons  stopped  to  speak  together 


POLITICAL  DEVELOPMENTS  FROM  1871  TO  1914  463 


measures. 


in  the  street  they  were  looked  upon  as  technically  assembling 
and  could  be  ordered  to  disperse,  as  the  historian  knows  by 
experience.  This  condition  of  things  lasted  for  twelve  years. 

A  veritable  White  Terror  had  set  in.  The  year  1878  alone  i 
saw  the  suppression  of  189  associations  and  258  publications, 
while  it  has  been  reckoned  that  in  all  521  persons  were  con¬ 
demned  to  a  grand  total  of  1100  years  for  Majestatsbeleidi - 
gung,  or  high  treason.  For  spreading  the  writings  of  John 
Most,  the  anarchist,  nine  Social  Democrats  were  sentenced 
in  a  batch  to  the  house  of  correction. 

Yet  Bismarck’s  policy  of  intimidation  was  to  prove  a  fail-  Futility 
ure  in  the  end.  At  the  first  election  after  the  dissolution  of  °fthe 
the  Reichstag  the  Social  Democrats  had  lost  three  members. 

These  were  regained,  however,  in  1881,  and  three  years  later 
the  number  of  members  had  actually  doubled  —  24  instead  of 
12 !  The  banishment  of  agitators  from  the  large  cities  had 
proved  an  especially  futile  measure,  for  they  quickly  made 
new  centres  for  themselves  in  the  smaller  towns.  Repressive 
measures  against  the  trades-unions,  too,  had  embittered  the 
whole  laboring  class.  Minister  von  Puttkammer  in  a  decree 
of  April  11,  1886,  went  so  far  as  to  forbid  strikes  as  revolu¬ 
tionary  and  to  declare  that  they  would  be  dealt  with  as  com¬ 
ing  under  the  anti-socialist  laws ! 

Bebel  in  his  memoirs  has  left  a  fascinating  account  of  the 
way  in  which  his  party  rose  superior  to  persecution :  of  the  ^  Social 
clever  subterfuges  for  outwitting  the  police ;  of  the  methods  Demo_ 
of  tracking  and  trailing  which  the  government  employed,  and  crats. 
the  disguises  and  tricks  by  which  they  were  evaded ;  of  the 
secret  meetings  and  the  setting  up  of  printing-presses  under 
the  very  nose  of  the  police.  A  newspaper  which  was  started 
in  Zurich  — it  was  called  the  “  Social  Democrat  ”  — was  of 
course  forbidden  in  Germany,  and  the  wildest  adventures  were 
1  connected  with  its  issue  and  circulation.  Once  a  pulpit  had 
to  serve  as  a  storage  place  and  again  bales  of  copies  of  the 


Subter¬ 
fuges  of 


464 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Bismarck 
and  the 
political  * 
parties. 


The  break 
with  the 
National 
Liberals 
—  1879. 


forbidden  sheet  that  had  been  printed  in  England  were  trans¬ 
ported  on  the  very  ship  that  carried  the  Kaiser.  German 
spies  followed  the  “comrades'5  even  to  foreign  countries  and 
tried  to  embroil  them  with  their  home  governments.  It  is 
estimated  that  in  all,  in  the  twelve  years  in  which  the  anti¬ 
socialist  laws  were  in  force,  1300  publications  were  suppressed, 
332  workmen's  organizations  were  broken  up,  and  900  persons 
suffered  expulsion,  not  to  speak  of  those  imprisoned  as  de¬ 
scribed  above.  In  the  other  scale  of  the  balance  are  to  be 
placed  35  socialist  members  of  the  Reichstag  elected  in  1890, 
with  a  vote  to  their  credit  of  1,500,000 ! 

Bismarck  had  begun  his  chancellorship  upheld  by  a  majority 
consisting  mainly  of  liberals ;  in  the  elections  of  1874,  then, 
the  National  Liberal  party  had  secured  155  seats  in  the 
Reichstag  and  already  had  178  seats  in  the  Prussian  Lower 
House.  But  Bismarck  was  growing  weary  of  the  alliance, 
which  was  as  one  of  fire  and  water ;  indeed,  Roon  had  called 
it  not  an  alliance  but  a  mesalliance .  The  party  was  bitterly 
reproached,  it  is  true,  for  being  too  friendly  to  Bismarck  and 
for  compromising  with  him  on  army  bills,  press  laws,  and  judi¬ 
cial  measures  ;  but  the  fact  remained  that  he  could  no  longer 
be  certain  of  having  his  policies  indorsed.  Also  he  had  new 
and  important  policies  in  view  that  were  likely  to  be  of  much 
more  interest  to  conservatives,  representing  as  the  latter  did 
the  great  industrialists  and  the  agrarians.  And  with  the 
conservatives  and  the  Centrists  the  death  of  Pope  Pius  IX. 
seemed  to  pave  the  way  for  reconciliation. 

Two  anecdotes  are  told  in  connection  with  Bismarck's 
growing  coolness  toward  his  former  supporters.  On  hearing 
of  the  first  attempt  upon  the  emperor’s  life  he  brought  his 
fist  down  on  the  table  with  “Now  I  have  them!”  “Your 
Highness  means  the  Social  Democrats?”  “No,  the  Na¬ 
tional  Liberals!”  At  the  news  of  the  second  attempt  he  is 
said  to  have  exclaimed,  “Now  I  can  dissolve  the  Reichstag,” 


I 

POLITICAL  DEVELOPMENTS  FROM  1871  TO  1914  465 

1 

and  then,  as  an  afterthought,  to  have  asked  how  badly  the 
emperor  was  injured.  In  1879  he  gave  the  party  a  regular 
castigation  in  the  Reichstag.  His  feelings  toward  them, 
he  said,  had  grown  “cool  to  the  very  heart”;  he  could  no 
longer  trust  them,  he  found  them  lacking  in  modesty,  he 
would  remind  them  that  the  Kulturkampf  (which  made  the 
Centre  his  enemies)  would  not  last  forever.  He  managed 
to  pass  his  protective  tariff  practically  without  their  aid  and, 
soon  after,  the  once  powerful  party  fell  a  prey  to  inward  dis¬ 
sension  which  culminated  in  a  secession  from  its  ranks.  It 
never  again  recovered  its  old  strength. 

Bismarck  approached  nearer  and  nearer  to  Canossa.  In 
July,  1878,  he  met  the  papal  nuncio,  Masella,  as  if  by  accident 
at  Kissingen.  A  month  later  a  papal  letter  betrayed  the  se¬ 
cret  that  Leo  XIII.  was  desirous  of  a  lasting  peace.  In  May, 
1879,  Berlin  learned  that  Windhorst,  the  great  Centrist  leader, 
for  the  first  time  in  nine  years,  had  appeared  at  a  soiree  in 
the  Chancellor’s  palace.  A  cup  of  liquid  had  accidentally 
been  upset  over  his  clothes,  but  this  had  merely  given  a  chance 
for  added  informality  and  heartiness.  Two  months  later 
Falk,  stern  father  of  the  May  laws,  resigned  from  the  ministry 
and  was  succeeded  by  von  Puttkammer.  Some  modifications 
were  introduced  in  the  schools.  Evidently  the  tide  had 
turned.  Interviews  and  concessions  alternated  with  each 
-  other  until,  in  July,  1880,  a  so-called  peace-law  paved  the  way 
for  the  reinstatement  of  bishops  and  the  resumption  of  eccle¬ 
siastical  taxation.  In  1882  and  1883  came  further  legislation 
and  further  modifications.  The  Pope  and  the  emperor 
again  began  to  correspond;  the  Pope  filled  the  vacant  sees 
of  Cologne  and  Posen.  In  1885  the  Pope  was  made  arbiter 
between  Germany  and  Spain  in  the  matter  of  the  ownership 
of  the  Caroline  Islands. 

There  is  no  need  to  follow  all  the  intermediate  steps,  but 
when,  in  1887,  we  find  the  Pope  using  his  influence  with  the 

VOL.  n  —  2h 


Reconcili¬ 
ation  with 
the 

church. 


\4 


466 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Results  of  Centre  to  have  it  support  the  German  government’s  army 
the  Kul-  bill,  it  is  evident  that  the  Kulturkampf  as  an  issue  was  nearly 
turkampf.  jea(j .  -m  fact  jn  ]\/[ay  0f  that  year  the  Pope  in  a  public  con¬ 
sistory  declared  the  conflict  ended.  By  no  means  all  of  the 
laws  had  been  abrogated.  In  the  empire  at  large  the  so- 
called  pulpit  paragraph  and  the  laws  against  the  Jesuits  still 
remained  in  force ;  while  in  Prussia  laws  concerning  civil  mar¬ 
riage,  control  of  the  schools,  church  property,  the  calling  of 
pastors,  and  religious  orders  were  retained,  though  in  a  modi¬ 
fied  form. 

The  \j  Meanwhile  the  reform  that,  apart  from  the  welding  of  the 
national  nation  into  an  empire,  will  be  remembered  by  posterity  as 

great  achievement  of  .William  XVreign,  was  in  full  prog- 
ihiflrance  ressT^for  thryear  that  saw  the  official  conclusion  of  the 
Kulturkampf  saw  also  the  announcement  of  a  plan  for  in¬ 
validity  and  old  age  insurance  that  was  to  serve  as  a  corner¬ 
stone  for  social  legislation  in  favor  of  the  working-man.  That 
the  introduction  of  compulsory  insurance  as  a  state  enterprise 
was  mainly  a  political  move  intended  to  checkmate  social 
democracy  cannot  well  be  denied^  As  early  as  1871  Bismarck 
had  written  to  Count  Itzenplitz  that  the  only  way  of  calling  a 
halt  to  the  Socialist  movement  was  to  realize  what  was  just 
and  practicable  in  its  demands.  When  bringing  forward  an 
accident  insurance  law  in  1881  he  had  spoken  of  “  infernal 
elements”  with  which  the  state  was  in  conflict.  It  is  well 
known  now  that  he  intended  the  insurance  to  be  a  better 
weapon  in  the  state’s  hand  than  it  eventually  became.  He 
always  maintained,  indeed,  that  it  would  add  to  the  dignity 
of  the  working-man,  but  he  had  wished  the  state  to  contribute 
much  more  largely  to  the  fund  and  to  keep  it  under  its  own 
control.  It  would  have  been  easy  then  to  exclude  the  unde¬ 
serving  from  its  benefits.  But  here  the  Reichstag  inter¬ 
vened.  It  was  not  charity,  not  a  gift  from  the  state,  that  was 
wanted  by  the  liberals.  The  original  bill  was  so  transformed 


POLITICAL  DEVELOPMENTS  FROM  1871  TO  1914  467 

in  debate  that  the  government  withdrew  it,  but  it  is  notice¬ 
able  that  in  the  emperor’s  famous  proclamation  of  November 
17, 1881,  the  words  occur  :  “  the  aid  to  which  they  (the  people) 
have  a  right”  New  drafts  of  laws  concerning  accident  and 
sickness  insurance  were  presented  in  1882 ;  in  1883  the  sick¬ 
ness,  insurance  and  in  1884  the  accident  insurance  went  into 
effect,  to  be  followed  by  the  invalidity  and  old  age  insurance 

|  iaJLSSSL^ 

In  one  of  its  chief  objects  the  insurance  failed :  it  neither 
tamed  the  Social  Democrats  nor  did  it  hinder  their  growth. 
It  did  not  even  earn  their  gratitude,  for  the  taunt  was  often 
heard  that  cake  was  being  offered  with  one  hand  while  a 
whip  was  wielded  in  the  other.  It  was  a  sop,  a  palliative,  and 
according  to  the  Marxist  creed  there  was  to  be  no  compro¬ 
mise  :  it  was  to  be  the  “state  of  the  future”  or  nothing  at 
all.  Close  students  of  Bismarck’s  policies  think  that  they 
were  all  interwoven  and  that  what  he  desired  was  advanced 
state-socialism  or  monopoly.  This  he  intended  to  put 
through  with  the  aid  of  the  adherents  which  the  social  insur¬ 
ance  would  win  for  the  crown.  Commerce  and  agriculture 
were  to  be  furthered  by  the  new  high  tariff,  and  the  state  was 
to  control  the  transportation  rates  by  bringing  all  the  rail¬ 
roads  into  its  own  hands.  This  latter  aim,  at  least,  Bismarck 
achieved,  though  only  for  the  Prussian  state. 

The  scheme  that  he  brought  forward  in  1875  was  for  the 
empire  to  buy  up  all  the  railroads  and  administer  them  as  a 
unit.  Almost  all  the  chambers  of  commerce  in  Germany 
were  in  favor  of  the  plan  and  the  Prussian  Diet  recorded 
a  vote  in  its  favor.  But  the  opposition  from  the  smaller 
states,  from  private  interests,  and  even  from  members  of  Bis¬ 
marck’s  cabinet,  was  insurmountable.  The  spirit  of  particu¬ 
larism  was  still  so  rampant  that  Saxony  refused  to  have  its 
railroad  tickets  of  the  same  color  as  Prussia’s  because  the  gov¬ 
ernment  thought  its  people  ought  always  to  know  whether 


/ 


Partial 
failure  of 
the 

insurance 

laws. 


The 

Prussian 

state 

railroads. 


468 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Acquisi¬ 
tion  of 
the  lines. 


they  were  travelling  at  home  or  abroad!  A  Wiirttemberg 
minister  declared  frankly  that  his  state  would  not  sacrifice 
its  railroads  to  this  “  Moloch  of  a  German  Empire.” 

Unable  to  carry  out  the  larger  plan,  which  some  think  he 
presented  merely  as  a  blind,  Bismarck  proceeded  to  consoli¬ 
date  the  Prussian  railroads  and  bring  at  least  the  principal 
pnes  under  state  ownership.  Therewas  nothing  revolution¬ 
ary  in  the  policy,  for  Prussia,  as  well  as  other  states,  was  al¬ 
ready  an  investor  in  some  of  the  lines.  By  the  end  of  18718 
30  per  cent  of  the  Prussian  railroads  were  in  the  govern¬ 
ment’s  hands  and  20  per  cent  were  actually  run  by  it.  The  ( 
country  meanwhile  was  being  enlightened  by  debates,  lec¬ 
tures,  and  publications  as  to  the  merits  and  disadvantages  of 
public  ownership.  The  more  pronounced  liberals,  like  Eu¬ 
gene  Richter,  were  bitterly  opposed.  Richter  declared  in  the 
Reichstag  that  the  idea  of  such  unnatural  centralization  was 
unheard  of  in  Europe,  —  that  it  would  impose  intolerable 
responsibilities ;  that  it  was  an  attempt  to  militarize  com¬ 
merce,  transportation,  and  intercourse ;  that  a  state  always 
conducted  enterprises  more  extravagantly  than  did  individ¬ 
uals;  that  there  would  be  unutterable  confusion  in  the 
budget.  “In  Prussia,  in  Germany,  in  the  whole  world,”  he 
said,  “  competition  and  private  industry  have  produced  tho 
growth  of  the  railroads.”  And  he  went  on  to  predict  dire 
calamity. 

In  1879,  sure  of  a  majority  in  the  Prussian  DietvRi§mar£k 
brought  forward  a  comprehensive  plan  involving  the  pur¬ 
chase  and  completion  of  nearly  2000  miles  of  trackage*  At 
the  same  time  he  stated  frankly  that  further  purchases  and 
practical  monopoly  were  his  ultimate  aim.  The  project 
involved^  a  doubling  of  the  public  debt*  which  already 
amounted  to  some  1,400,000,000  marks,  and, ail  increase, in, 
yearly  interest  of  nearly  60,000,000  marks.  The  former 
shareholders  were  to  be  allowed  to  exchange  their  stock  for 


POLITICAL  DEVELOPMENTS  FROM  1871  TO  1914  469 


Africa. 


government  bonds.  The  whole  measure  was  finally  passed 
December  17,  1879.  The  further  purchases  were  made  as 
predicted,  and  by  1885  all  the  really  important  lines  had  been 
acquired. 

Meanwhile  slowly  but  surely  the  desire  to  mix  in  the  The  ques- 
larger  affairs  of  the  world  was  becoming  apparent  in  Germany.  tlon 
Hitherto  there  had  been  no  ambition  to  o wn  colonies  across 
the  seas.  Doubtless  in  1871  France  would  have  been  only 

t / 

too  delighted  to  cede  islands  or  African  tracts  rather  than 
Alsace-Lorraine,  but  the  idea  met  with  no  response.  Since 
then,  indeed,  the  secrets  of  the  jungles  had  been  opened  up  by 
the  English  ^Stanley  and  Livingstone,  and  German  explorers 
likeNachtigal  and  von  Richthofen  had  penetrated  in  all  direc¬ 
tions. 

One  can  trace  the  day  and  almost  the  minute  when  Ger-  South- 
many  determined  to  become  a  colonial  power.  On  April  24,  west 
1884,  Bismarck  cabled  to  the  German  consul  at  Cape  Town : 
“According  to  information  imparted  by  Mr.  Liideritz  the 
(British)  colonial  authorities  doubt  if  his  acquisitions  north 
of  the  Orange  River  can  claim  German  protection.  You  are 
to  declare  officially  that  he  and  his  settlements  will  be  safe¬ 
guarded  by  the  Empire.”  Liideritz  was  a  Bremen  trader 
who  had  conceived  the  idea  of  bartering  with  Southwest 
African  chieftains  for  land  grants  and  privileges  which  should 
enable  him  to  start  plantations,  ostrich  farms,  and  industrial 
enterprises.  He  had  obtained  from  a<  Hottentot  leader  a 
grant  of  many  square  miles  on  the  bay  of  Angra  Pequena,  and 
Bismarck  had  instructed  his  Cape  Town  consul  to  support 
Liideritz  in  case  there  were  no  conflicting  claims.  England 
was  approached  in  the  matter  and  gave  the  oracular  verdict 
that  herjuwn-sovereignty  extended  only  to  Whale  Bay  and  to 
some jslandiv offiAhe  coast;  butjthat  any  claim  to  territory 
between  Cape  Colony  and  the  eighteenth  degree  of  latitude 
was  “an  attack  on  Cape  Colony’s  legitimate  rights.”  De- 


470 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Dif¬ 

ferences 

with 

England. 


Impor¬ 
tance  of 
German 
trade 
interests. 


signed  to  check  Liideritz’s  temerity  this  declaration  had  the 
opposite  effect.  Even  before  it  arrived  he  had  acquired,  by 
treaties  the  whole  stretch  of  coast  from  the  Orange  River 
to  the  twenty-sixth  degree  of  latitude ;  and  England  s  ac¬ 
knowledgment  that  her  sovereignty  was  restricted  to 
Whale  Bay  and  the  islands  was,  of  course,  most  welcome.  She 
was  now  politely  asked  to  give  the  basis  for  her  other  in¬ 
definite  claims  and  in  particular  to  state  what  arrangements 
had  been  made  for  protecting  German  subjects  when  engaged 
in  legitimate  undertakings. 

England  was  taken  in  a  trap.  Her  Colonial  Secretary, 
Lord  Derby,  was  -obliged  to_admit  that,  although  ninety 
years^previously  troops  had  once  landed  on  the  Southwest 
African  coast,  England  had  never,  claimed  it  or  attempted.to 
set  up  a  government.  Cape  Colony  then  tried  to  establish 
what  Bismarck  called  a  “Monroe  Doctrine  in  Africa,”  but 
the  prime  minister,  Lord  Granville,  finally  ofifered.excuses^and 
the  Cabinet  formally  recognized  the  German  protectorate 
over  the  whole  territory.  The  whole  matter  had  thus  ap¬ 
parently  been  settled  when,  in  July,  1884,  Cape  Colony  sud- 
denly  declared  that,  with  Lord  Derby’ s  sanctionTsEe  R^L  an¬ 
nexed  Southwest  Africa.  Without  hesitation  Bismarckthen 
despatched  three  warships  to  the  spot,  and_oii.August  7 
the  German  flag  was  hoisted.  England  was  not  willing  to  go 
to  war  about  those  sandy  wastes  and  her  government  ex¬ 
plained  that  the  annexation  order  referred  only  to  such  lands 
as  were  not  actually  occupied  by  the  Germans  and  con¬ 
tented  itself  with  Betschuanaland  and  Kalahari,  well  in  from 
the  coast. 

Bismarck  had  wished  to  leave  the  material  side  of  the 
founding^  management,  and  development  of  the  colony  en¬ 
tirely  to  Luderitz.  He  had  always  been  averse  to  having 
the  empire  assume  such  burdens.  He  had  looked  on  with 
equanimity  (except  that  he  secured  a  coaling .  station  in 


POLITICAL  DEVELOPMENTS  FROM  1871  TO  1914  471 


Samoa)  when  England  annexed  the  Fiji.  Islands  in  1875  and 
Northern  Borneo  in  1881,  and  when  France,  in  IS&^jiecured 
a  large  portion  of  the  Congo  district.  It  was  not  the  land 
but  the  trading  facilities  that  he  desired.  From  various 
quarters  complaints  had  been  lodged  as  to  unjust  treatment 
by  French  and  English  authorities.  In  the  beginning,  at 
least,  a  consul  here,  a  naval  station  there,  was  the  height  of 
his  ambition.  He  had  waked  up  to  the  fact,  indeed,  that 
German  trading  interests  had  grown  to  be  of  considerable 
importance  in  every  quarter  of  the  globe,  that  Hamburg  and 
Bremen  merchants  had  branch  offices  in  almost  every  tropical 
centre.  One  has  only  to  think  of  the  great  firm  of  C.  Woer- 
mann,  with  its  own  line  of  steamers,  or  of  F.  M.  Vietor  and 
^ons^who  had  been  trading  with  Togoland  since  1 856.  Ham¬ 
burg,  smcej^5ffijiadhad  its  own  treaty  with  the  sultan  oC 
Zanzibar^  jthe  firm  of  Godfrey  in  Samoa  had  brought  into  its 
own  hands  practically  the  whole  profitable  trade  in  copra,  a 
product  of  the  cocoanut  tree. 

One  can  imagine  Bismarck’s  embarrassment,  now,  when  he 
found  that  Liideritz  was  financially  unsound  and  was  being 
tempted  to  sell  out  to  an  English  company.  With  the  aid 
of  the  bankers  Bleichroder  and  Hansemann,  Bismarck  suc¬ 
ceeded  in  forming  a  stock  company  with  a  capital  of  more 
than  a  million  marks,  but  the  administration  of  the  colony 
was  a  task  the  government  could  no  longer  avoid.  An 
imperial  commission  was  therefore  appointed. 

The  events  in  Southwest  Africa  and  the  chancellor’s 
change  of  heart  towards  the  question  of  colonies  had  set 
the  whole  German  trading  world  to  making  treaties  with 
chieftains  and  to  claiming  imperial  protection,  and  Bis¬ 
marck  himself  now  favored  an  energetic  policy  of  acquisition. 
The  explorers  were  able  to  furnish  useful  hints  as  to  what 
spots  were  desirable  and  could  be  ranked  as  “no-man’s- 
land.”  Nachtigal,  whose  book,  The  Sahara  and  Soudan , 


Bismarck 
forms  a 
stock 
company. 


Togo  and 
Cameroon. 


472 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Colonies 
in  the 
Pacific 
islands. 


had  had  a  great  vogue,  was  pressed  into  the  service  and  one 
of  his  commissions  was  to  carry  a  statuette  of  Emperor 
William  I.  to  a  certain  chieftain  who  was  likely  to  prove 
friendly.  The  chieftain  turned  out  to  be  indubitably  a 
protege  of  France  \  and  the  Loos  Islands,  where  Nachtigal 
attempted  a  flag-hoisting,  turned  out  to  be  indubitably 
English.  All  the  same  it  was  Nachtigal  who  secured  the  large 
colonies  of  Togo  and  Cameroon  after  running  an  undignified 
race  with  the  English.  It  was  on  July  14  that  Nachtigal 
hoisted  his  country’s  flag  in  Cameroon ;  only  five  days  later 
the  British  consul,  Hewett,  arrived  with  the  intention  of  tak¬ 
ing  possession.  In  Bimbia  it  was  they  same,  but  England 
secured  Victoria,  Ambas  Bay,  Mondoieh,  Bibundi  and  terri¬ 
tory  on  the  Rio  del  Rev.  For  a  time  it  looked  as  though 
conflicting  claims  might  lead  to  serious  trouble  between  the 
two  powers.  But  Bismarck  sent  his  own  son,  Herbert,  to 
carry  on  the  negotiations  in  London,  and  the  treaties.  oi  Apsil 
29,  18pTand~orJuIy  26,  1886,  finally  settled  alL,the_African 
disputes. 

On  bearing  that  Germany  had  designs  on  the  Island  of 
New  Guinea,  Australia  had  meanwhile  taken  fright,  and  the 
government  at  Queensland,  without  waiting  to  consult 
the  mother  country,  sent  the  chief  of  police  of  Thursday 
Island  to  annex  the  whole  considerable  territory,  which  he 
did.  But  England  herself  threw  a  wet  blanket  over  the 
enterprise  on  account  of  the  expense  of  administration.  The 
Australian  colonies  then  held  a  general  conference  in  Sydney 
ancf  protested _  violently  against  the  permitting  of  foreign 
powers  jtojiold  land  in  the  South  Seas.  This  dispute,  like 
the  others,  ended  in  compromise.  Thejnorthern  coast,  now 
known  as  Kaiser  Wilhelm’s  Land,  ^and  a  group  of  islands  re¬ 
christened  the  Bismarck  Archipelago  wTere  abandoned  to 
Germany. 

By  another  agreement  the  Caroline,  Browne,  Marshall,. and 


POLITICAL  DEVELOPMENTS  FROM  1871  TO  1914  473 


i 

i 

■ 

■| 

i 


i 


* 

i 


Providence  islandiLwere  declared  within  the  sphere  of  inftu- 
^^ce  of  Germany.  Spain,  indeed,  flew  into  a  rage  at  finding 
tha iher  Caroline  Islands  were  thus  to  be  disposed  of.  and  the 
populace  attacked  the  German  embassy  in  Madrid.  But 
Bismarck  gave  the  dispute  a  graceful  turn  by  leaving,,  as-we 
have  seen,  the^whole  decision  to  the  Pope.  It  was  a  special 
compliment  to  his  Holiness,”  for  Spain’s  original  title  to  the 
islands  rested  on  the  fact  that  a  former  Pope,  Alexander  VI., 
had  drawn  an  imaginary  line  apportioning  to  her  that  part 
of  the  ocean. 

Germany’s  most  valuable  acquisition  was  made  on  the 
east  coast  of  Africa.  Her  pretexts  for  interference  were  some- 
wKat  artificial.  The  sister-in-law  of  the  Sultan  of  Zanzibar, 
who  had  become  a  German  subject  by  marrying  a  Hamburg 
merchant,  was  owed  money  by_the^  sultan.  The  latter  was 
accused,  too,  of  having  disregarded  German  trading  treaties. 
Fraiy  Ruete,  the  widow,  was  placed  on  a  warship,  while  S. 
Rohlfs,  an  explorer,  was  made  consul  to  those  parts ;  and  Dr. 
Karl  Peters  and  two  others,  under  the  firm  name  of  “Ger¬ 
man  East  African  Society,  Dr.  Peters  &  Co.,”  were  instructed 
to  find  land  for  a  German  settlement.  Herbert  Bismarck  had 
meanwhile  gained  an  admission  from  England’s  prime  minis¬ 
ter  that  the  lands  on  the  main  coast  facing  Zanzibar  were 
under  no  recognized  form  of  government. 

But  the  sultan,  prompted  by  English  traders,  claimed 
the  lands  in  question,  forbade  any  chieftain  to  cede  rights 
to  the  Germans,  and  sent  troops  to  various  points.  However, 
when,  on  Aug.  7,  1885,  five  German  warships,  including  the 
one  which  carried  Frau  Ruete^  appeared  off  the  Island  the 
sultan  changed  his  tactics  completely.  So  friendly  indeed 
did  he  prove  that  the  Germans  could  not  think  of  pressing 
Frau  Ruete’s  case  for  fear  of  hurting  his  feelings ;  and  the 
poor  lady,  although  later  she  made  a  second  journey  to 
Zanzibar  for  the  purpose,  never  obtained  satisfaction.  Ger- 


The  Caro¬ 
line  and 
Marshall 
islands. 


East 

Africa. 


England 

and 

Zanzibar. 


1 


Helgoland 


Foreign 

policy. 


474  A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GEiviuANY 

many  acquired  a,  largest, rant  oLland  in  the  interior,  but  left 
to  the  sultan  a  wide  strip  of  coast.  There  were  the  inevitable 
rubs  with  England,  where  Dr.  Peters  and  the  German  ex¬ 
plorer  Emin  Pasha  were  suspected  of  planning  further  annexa¬ 
tions  on  a  grand  scale.  But  here,  too,  a  treaty ,  concluded  in 
July,  1890,  finally,  settled,  alUifficulties.  In  return  for  the 
protectorate  over  Zanzibar  itself,  for  Witu  and  Somaliland 
and  other  districts,  England  used  her  good  offices  with  the 
sultan  to  make  him  abandon  his  strip  of  coast,  allowed 
Germany  a  clear  title  to  a  huge  tract  of  land  stretching  west 
to  the  Congo  Free  State,  and,  last  but  not  least,  surrendered 
the  Island  of  Plelgoland  in  the  North  Sea,  one  of  the 
supreme  acts  of  folly  in  her  diplomatic  history. 

Germany  now  had  a  colonial  empire  nearly  five  times  its 
own  original  size,  and  it  had  been  gained  without  striking 
a  blow.  Bismarck’s  policy  now  wras  to  keep  the  peace  and 
\  devote  himself  to  internal  affairs. 

\  /  After  1871  it  was  no  secret  that  France  would  take  the 
first  opportunity  to  endeavor  to  recover  Alsace-Lorraine. 
The  statue  of  Strassburg  in  the  Place  de  la  Concorde  was  kept 
draped  with  black  against  the  day  of  liberation.  Bismarck’s 
efforts,  accordingly,  were  directed  to  keeping  France  isolated 
from  other  countries  and  especially  to  preventing  her  from 
joining  with  Russia,  a  danger  which  seemed  especially  threat¬ 
ening  in  1875  and  in  1887.  In  the  former  year  the  wily  Russian 
minister  Gortsehakoff  did  his  best  to  embroil  France  and 
Germany,  wffiile  in  the  latter  Boulanger  seemed  about  to  play 
the  part  of  a  new  Napoleon.  Bismarck’s  diplomacy  was 
masterly.  He  used  every  artifice  knowrn  to  his  trade : 
bribery,  threats  and  cajoleries,  secret  and  underhanded  agree¬ 
ments  like  his  famous  re-insurance  treaty  with  Russia,  above 
all  a  frankness  so  amazing  that  it  completely  bluffed  his 
opponents. 

Even  before  the  surrender  at  Sedan  Bismarck  had  sounded 


POLITICAL  DEVELOPMENTS  FROM  1871  TO  1914  475 


the  courts  of  St.  Petersburg  and  Berlin  as  to  a  possible  alli¬ 
ance.  He  had  earned  the  Czar’s  gratitude  by  helping  him  to 
obtain  a  modification  of  that  clause  in  the  Paris  Treaty  of  1856 
which  restricted  the  number  of  warships  Russia  might  main¬ 
tain  in  the  Black  Sea.  He  was  willing  to  some  extent,  too, 
to  further  her  aims  in  the  Balkan  peninsula.  There  was  a 
close  personal  friendship  between  the  Czar  and  Emperor 
William.  With  Austria,  on  the  other  hand,  Bismarck  had 
purposely  been  lenient  after  the  war  of  1866 ;  and  as  Austria’s 
designs  in  the  Balkans  were  sure  to  conflict  with  those  of 
Russia,  she  could  not  refuse  Germany’s  proffered  friendship. 
The  so-called  three-emperor  alliance  was  to  remain  in  force 
until  1879. 

But  it  showed  rifts  before  it  broke.  Disturbances  in  the 
Balkans  in  1876  caused  the  Czar,  through  the  German  mili¬ 
tary  envoy,  Count  von  Werder,  to  ask  Bismarck  whether 
Germany  would  remain  neutral  were  Russia  to  attack 
Austria.  Bismarck  answered  what  was  doubtless  the 
truth :  peace  among  the  monarchies  was  Germany’s  prime 
need;  should  peace  prove  impossible  between  Austria  and 
Russia,  Germany  might  look  on  with  equanimity  while 
a  few  battles  were  won  or  lost,  but  she  could  not  permit 
either  of  her  friends  to  be  crippled  as  a  great  power.  In 
consequence  of  this  attitude  Russia  came  to  terms  with 
Austria,  secured  her  neutrality  in  the  case  of  an  eventual 
struggle  with  Turkey,  and,  as  an  earnest  of  her  good  will, 
abandoned  to  her  in  1877  the  old  Turkish  provinces  of  Bosnia 
and  Herzegovina. 

Not  many  months  passed  before  the  war  between  Russia 
and  Turkey  became  an  actuality.  We  need  not  follow  its 
details  here.  What  interests  us  chiefly  is  that  Russia,  though 
victorious,  was  prevented  by  Austria  and  England  from  im¬ 
posing  the  terms  she  desired.  The  Czar  turned  to  Bismarck 
with  the  request  that  a  congress  of  the  great  powers  be  held 


The  three- 

emperor 

alliance. 


Bosnia 
and  Her¬ 
zegovina. 


The 

Congress 
of  Berlin, 
1878. 


476 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The 

breach 

with 

Russia. 


The 

Austrian- 
German 
alliance  of 
1879. 


at  Berlin ;  it  was  duly  called  and  remained  in  session  from 
June  13  to  July  13,  1878. 

Bismarck  had  a  difficult  course  to  steer.  If  he  were  to 
offend  Russia,  she  would  naturally  gravitate  to  France.  Yet 
it  soon  became  evident  that  he  could  not  hope  to  retain  the 
friendship  both  of  Russia  and  of  Austria,  at  least  not  as  an 
open  ally.  The  Congress  of  Berlin,  as  is  well  known,  ended 
in  a  series  of  unsatisfactory  compromises  teeming  with 
germs  of  future  discord.  There  was  discontent  among 
the  Balkan  powers  themselves,  while  the  Russian  press  grew 
more  and  more  bitter  against  Germany  when  it  was  found  that 
Bismarck  did  not  uphold  Russia  in  her  various  contentions. 
Russian  troops  were  massed  near  the  frontier,  while  in  August, 
1879,  the  Czar  intimated  to  the  emperor  very  plainly  that 
evil  consequences  must  ensue  should  Russia  s  interpretation 
of  the  Berlin  treaty  be  opposed.  Bismarck,  meanwhile,  was 
conducting  negotiations  with  the  Austro-Hungarian  minis¬ 
ter  of  foreign  affairs,  Count  Andrassy,  with  regard  to  a  de¬ 
fensive  alliance  against  Russia. 

It  was  not  easy  to  win  Emperor  William  for  the  change 
of  front.  The  friendship  with  Russia  was  traditional  — 
was  a  fixed  habit  with  him.  The  truth  seems  to  be  that  he 
was  personally  fonder  of  Czar  Alexander  than  he  was  of 
Emperor  Franz  Joseph.  He  insisted  now  on  holding  a 
personal  interview  with  the  Czar  and  in  spite  of  Bismarck  s 
remonstrances  journeyed  to  Russia  for  the  purpose.  In  the 
interview  he  actually  wept  and  Bismarck  speaks  of  his  in¬ 
considerate  sentimentality.”  The  chancellor  finally  used 
his  strongest  weapon  and  threatened  to  resign,  which  brought 
the  emperor  to  terms.  Standing  as  he  did  on  the  edge  of 
the  grave,  he  had  said,  he  did  not  wish  to  change  his  policies ; 
but  a  change  of  chancellors  was  still  more  distasteful.  The 
Austrian-German  defensive  alliance,  still  in  force,  was  signed 
at  Schonbrunn  on  September  24,  1879.  Italy,  alarmed 


POLITICAL  DEVELOPMENTS  FROM  1871  TO  1914 


by  the  French  occupation  of  Tunis,  joined  the  alliance  in 
1883.  In  1884  Bismarck  concluded  his  secret  reinsurance- 
treaty  with  Russia,  each  agreeing  to  remain  neutral  should 
the  other  be  attacked.  It  was  a  strange  agreement  to  enter 
into  behind  the  back  of  an  ally,  for  Austria  was  the  only 
enemy  Russia  feared. 

In  spite  of  the  reinsurance  treaty  and  in  consequence  of 
new  Balkan  wars  (in  1885  Bulgaria  joined  East  Roumelia  in 
a  revolt  against  Turkey,  and  defeated  Servia  which  was  on 
Turkey’s  side)  the  relations  with  Russia  grew  very  strained. 
In  the  last  important  speech  he  ever  held  in  the  Reichstag 
(Feb.  6, 1888)  Bismarck  declared  that  Russian  public  opinion 
had  shown  the  door  to  an  old,  influential,  and  reliable  friend. 
“We  won’t  thrust  ourselves  upon  them,”  he  cried; 
not  running  after  any  one  !” 


« 


we  are 


y 


A 


With  the  death  of  Emperor  William,  March  17,  1888,  the 
old  order  of  things  changed.  The  reign  of  the  next  emperor, 
Frederick  III.,  was  shrouded  in  gloom,  for  he  came  to  the 
throne  as  a  dying  man.  Had  he  lived  he  would  have  inaugu¬ 
rated  a  mild  and  liberal  policy.  His  great  desire,  he  said  in 
a  proclamation  to  his  people,  was  to  make  Germany  a  sanct¬ 
uary  of  peace.  He  was  very  open  to  English  influences,  and 
Bismarck  hated  those  influences  worse  than  poison.  “We 
are  a  second-class  race  to  them,”  he  once  declared,  “fit  only 
to  serve  them.”  The  new  emperor  upheld  Bismarck  in  his 
objection  to  a  marriage  between  Prince  Alexander  of  Batten- 
berg,  the  ex-ruler  of  the  Bulgarians,  and  Princess  Victoria, 
Frederick’s  daughter :  “  Two  empresses  are  fighting  his  and 
my  views,”  Bismarck  said  to  his  friend  Busch,  “she  of  India 
and  she  of  Germany ;  and  daughter  Victoria  crushes  him  with 
her  violence.  She  has  and  always  has  had  a  sharper  tongue 
than  he ;  and  now  that  he  is  ill  and  cannot  stand  vexation  he 


v 


Emperor 
Frederick 
III.,  1888. 


\ 


i 


478 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Bismarck 
and  Wil¬ 
liam  II. 


Stocker. 


William 

II’s. 

character. 


is  less  of  a  match  for  her  than  ever.  .  .  .  My  pulse  averages 
fifteen  beats  to  the  minute  higher  than  under  the  previous 
reign.”  Frederick  III.  died  on  June  15,  1888. 

Bismarck’s  pulse  was  to  beat  still  quicker  under  the  reign 
of  Frederick’s  son.  At  first,  indeed,  no  union  could  have 
been  closer.  After  the  speech  from  the  throne  at  the  open¬ 
ing  of  the  first  Reichstag,  Bismarck  had  seized  the  young 
emperor’s  hand  and  pressed  it  to  his  lips.  In  public  he 
praised  the  gifts  and  the  powers  of  comprehension,  the  firm¬ 
ness  of  will,  the  administrative  ability  of  the  new  ruler  and 
declared  that  he  had  promised  at  the  latter’s  urging  to  remain 
at  his  side,  which  promise  he  would  keep  so  long  as  a  breath 
was  left  in  his  body.  “In  his  devotion  to  me  he  goes  too 
far,”  the  chancellor  once  said.  “I  believe  at  this  moment 
that  Prince  Bismarck  has  completely  captured  the  Kaiser,” 
wrote  Court  Preacher  Stocker  in  the  famous  “  funeral-pyre” 
letter  in  which  he  conspired  to  down  the  chancellor’s  influ¬ 
ence  and  break  up  the  “cartell,”  or  political  combination 
in  the  Reichstag  on  which  Bismarck  placed  his  hopes.  The 
wily  preacher’s  secret  advice  to  the  influential  editor  of  the 
Kreuzzeitung  was  “to  light  funeral-pyres  and  let  them  flame 
high”  around  the  “ cartell.”  The  Kaiser  must  not  notice  the 
attempt  to  sow  discord  between  him  and  Bismarck,  but, 
went  on  this  arch-conspirator,  “by  nourishing  the  points 
where  he  (the  Kaiser)  is  instinctively  on  our  side  we  build 
up  his  principles  without  personally  irritating  him.” 

The  world  at  large  expended  much  curiosity  on  Wil¬ 
liam  II.’s  psychology.  Many  expected  him,  with  his  splen¬ 
did  army,  at  once  to  set  out  like  Frederick  the  Great  and 
conquer  some  new  Silesia.  Yet  his  first  great  interests 
proved  to  be  reform  in  labor  conditions  and  in  education. 
What  he  did  for  the  modernization  of  the  school  curriculum 
has  never  been  sufficiently  appreciated,  and  the  same  is  true 
of  the  results  of  the  great  labor  conference  held  in  Berlin. 


POLITICAL  DEVELOPMENTS  FROM  1871  TO  1914  479 

People  at  the  time  could  only  talk  of  the  emperor’s  eccen¬ 
tricities  :  of  his  fondness  for  an  American  sportsman,  of  his 
speeches  in  public  that  were  such  as  a  mediaeval  crusad¬ 
ing  prince  might  have  made ;  of  his  journeys  in  every  direc¬ 
tion.  He  was  nicknamed  Wilhelm  der  Plotzliche  or  William 
the  Sudden ;  and  again  the  Reise  Kaiser  or  travelling  em- 
0  peror  as  opposed  to  the  Greise  Kaiser  (William  I.)  or  the 
Weise  Kaiser  (Frederick  HI.).  His  journeys  in  the  first  year 
took  him  to  England,  Russia,  Italy,  Turkey  and  Greece. 

The  emperor  soon  gave  evidences  of  courage  and  deter-  The  Em- 
mination.  Stocker,  whose  famous  letter,  indeed,  had  not  peror’s 
yet  been  made  public,  was  told  to  cease  his  political  agitation  coura8e* 
or  resign  his  position  as  court  preacher ;  the  official  Reichs- 
anzeiger  declared  the  emperor’s  approval  of  the  “cartell” 
and  intimated  that  the  emperor  personally  resented  the 
attacks  of  the  Kreuzzeitung.  With  Bismarck  his  relations 
continued  of  the  best.  After  the  completion  of  the  insurance 
laws  (May,  1889)  and  the  passing  of  a  bill  for  reorganizing 
the  navy  William  wrote  to  his  chancellor  congratulating 
him  on  such  achievements,  and  adding :  “  I  pray  God  that 
in  my  difficult  and  responsible  position  as  ruler  He  may 
preserve  you  to  me  as  a  faithful  and  tried  adviser  these 
many  years  to  come.”  Less  than  three  months  later  the 
news  was  flashed  around  the  world  that  the  greatest  of  states¬ 
men  had  retired. 

“  It  was  a  matter,”  said  the  Emperor  to  Prince  Hohenlohe,  The  fall 
"of  whether  the  Hohenzollern  or  the  Bismarck  dynasty  of 
should  rule.”  Several  questions  had  been  at  issue.  Russia  Bismarck 
wished  a  renewal  of  the  “ re-insurance  treaty,”  as  she  planned 
to  occupy  Bulgaria  and  this  would  mean  war  with  Austria. 

Bismarck,  although  he  had  declaimed  against  Russia,  con¬ 
sidered  that  a  regular  breach  with  her  would  be  a  fatal  mis¬ 
fortune.  His  objection  to  the  Battenberg  alliance  with 
the  emperor’s  sister  had  been  wholly  on  the  ground  that  the 


480 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


ex-ruler  of  Bulgaria  was  hated  at  St.  Petersburg.  He  was 
willing  now  to  desert  Austria.  The  Emperor  wished  to 
stand  by  Franz  Josef  even  if  it  meant  war  with  Russia  and 
with  France.  Another  sharp  difference  of  opinion  concerned 
the  treatment  of  Social  Democrats ;  Bismarck  was  for  con¬ 
tinuing  the  severity  and  renewing  the  anti-socialist  laws, 
calling  out  the  troops  if  need  be,  to  repress  violence.  The  % 
emperor  declared  that  he  was  not  going  to  begin  his  reign 
by  shooting  down  his  subjects.  In  opposition  to  Bismarck 
he  summoned  a  conference  of  ministers.  Bismarck  pro¬ 
duced  a  cabinet  order  of  1852  directing  that  ministers  might 
not  confer  with  the  crown  independently  of  their  chief. 
William  acknowledged  its  validity  but  demanded  its  imme¬ 
diate  cancellation.  Bismarck  acquiesced  but  took  no  steps 
in  the  matter.  Relations  became  strained  to  the  breaking 
point.  After  one  stormy  interview  the  emperor  remarked : 
“He  all  but  flung  an  inkstand  at  my  head  !”  In  public  he 
declared  his  intention  of  continuing  the  social  reforms  of 
his  grandfather;  uand  whoever  opposes  me  in  this  work  I 
shall  crush!”  He  objected  to  Bismarck’s  conferring  with 
parliamentary  leaders  behind  his,  the  emperor’s,  back,  and 
made  a  special  issue  of  a  visit  of  Windhorst  to  the  Chancel¬ 
lor’s  palace.  Bismarck  is  said  to  have  told  the  emperor  to 
his  face  that  the  latter’s  authority  ceased  at  his  own  hall 
door.  Windhorst  had  declared  after  quitting  Bismarck, 
“I  come  from  the  political  deathbed  of  a  great  man,  and 
sure  enough  on  March  17  came  an  official  request  from  the 
emperor  that  the  chancellor  should  lay  down  his  office. 
When  he  delayed  sending  in  his  resignation  the  request  was 
repeated.  On  March  20  the  resignation  was  finally  handed 
in  and  at  once  accepted. 

Bismarck’s  version  of  the  quarrel  was  that  the  Kaiser 
was  upsetting  policies  it  had  taken  him,  the  chancellor,  a 
lifetime  to  build  up  and  the  success  of  which  depended  on 


POLITICAL  DEVELOPMENTS  FKOM  1871  TO  1914  481 


their  continuity.  He  himself  was  to  be  made  a  mere  tool. 
Confabulations  between  sovereigns  were  to  settle  the  most 
important  matters  just  exactly  as  in  the  benighted  days  of 
absolute  monarchy.  Personal  friendships  were  to  deter¬ 
mine  war  and  peace.  Statesmen  were  superfluous ;  the 
emperor  wished  to  be  his  own  chancellor. 

On  the  day  of  the  chancellor’s  farewell  visit  to  the  emperor 
all  Berlin  was  astir  as  though  for  some  great  ceremony. 
The  chancellor’s  horses  were  detached  from  his  carriage 
and  he  was  drawn  along  Unter  den  Linden  and  pelted  with 
a  rain  of  flowers.  Chance  and  the  surging  crowd  landed  the 
author  of  this  “ Short  History”  directly  in  front  of  the  door 
of  the  palace.  He  saw  the  man  of  iron  mount  the  steps,  con¬ 
cealing  his  face  in  a  nosegay  to  hide  his  agitation.  Then 
the  great  door  clanged  behind  him. 

Everything  was  done  in  public  to  soften  the  fall.  Bis¬ 
marck  was  created  Duke  of  Lauenburg,  which  title,  he  de¬ 
clared  bitterly,  would  serve  as  a  nom  de  guerre  when  he 
wished  to  travel  incognito.  He  was  made  field  marshal, 
too,  and  was  given  a  life-size  portrait  of  the  emperor. 
The  latter  seemed  overcome  with  grief  at  being  unable  to 
prevail  on  the  chancellor  to  retain  his  burdensome  post. 
“My  heart  is  as  heavy  as  though  I  had  once  more  lost  my 
grandfather,”  he  telegraphed  to  the  Grand  Duke  of  Wei¬ 
mar;  “but  it  is  the  will  of  God  and  I  must  bear  it  though 
it  kill  me.  I  am  now  the  officer  on  watch  in  the  ship  of 
state.  The  course  remains  the  same.  Full  steam  ahead!” 

The  subsequent  period,  being  one  not  of  incident  but  of 
steady  development  along  different  lines,  does  not  lend 
itself  to  chronological  treatment.  There  were  wars  in  the 
colonies,  indeed,  with  discontented  chieftains,  but  their 
consideration  here  would  be  unprofitable.  The  acquisition 
of  two  Samoan  islands,  of  the  harbor  of  Kiaoutschou,  and 

VOL.  ii  —  2 1 


Bismarck’ 
version  of 
the 

quarrel. 


Bismarck’ 

farewell. 


The  new 
chancel¬ 
lors. 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Bismarck 
rattles  his 
chain. 


of  Helgoland  kept  up  the  Hohenzollern  tradition  whereby 
each  ruler  added  something  to  his  hereditary  possessions. 
Kiaoutschou,  wrested  from  China  in  1898  as  compensation 
for  the  death  of  two  missionaries,  was  to  prove  the  most 
promising  of  all  Germany’s  colonies. 

The  successive  chancellors  (Caprivi  until  1894,  Hohenlohe 
until  1900,  Billow  until  1909  and  then  Bethmann-Hollweg) 
were  to  leave  little  personal  imprint  on  German  history. 
Under  Hohenlohe,  indeed,  the  great  civil  code  or  burgerliches 
Gesetzbuch  was  adopted  (1896),  but  work  had  been  begun  on 
it  twenty  years  before.  Caprivi  s  tariff  reduction  was  a 
burning  issue  in  its  day,  but  has  lost  its  interest  now.  Ca- 
privi’s  regime  came  to  an  end  because  of  differences  with  the 
emperor  about  the  treatment  of  the  socialists,  whom  the 
emperor,  reversing  his  former  policy,  would  now  have  liked 
to  see  treated  with  greater  severity.  William  had  gone 
so  far  as  to  bring  forward  a  measure  for  having  the  ring¬ 
leaders  in  strikes  punished  with  house  of  correction,  which 
measure  the  Reichstag  voted  down.  Hohenlohe  resigned 
from  old  age  (he  was  81)  and  Billow’s  fate  was  like  that  of 
any  English  prime  minister  who  fails  to  obtain  a  majority. 

All  through  Caprivi’s  administration  and  a  good  part  of 
that  of  Hohenlohe  the  grim  old  ex-chancellor  at  Friedrichs- 
ruhe  rattled  at  his  chains.  He  was  elected  a  member  of  the 
Reichstag  in  1891,  but  never  took  his  seat.  But  in  the 
Hamburger  Nachrichten  he  scourged  the  government  as  with 
scorpions,  and  such  sentiments  were  uttered  to  representa¬ 
tives  of  foreign  newspapers  that  Caprivi  sent  word  to  the 
German  diplomatic  corps  to  warn  the  governments  that 
“His  Majesty  distinguishes  between  the  Prince  Bismarck 
of  formerly  and  of  now.”  When,  in  1892,  Herbert  Bismarck 
married  the  Countess  Hoyos  in  Vienna,  by  order  of  Caprivi 
the  members  of  the  German  embassy  treated  Bismarck 
“ only  with  conventional  politeness”;  “and,’  continued 


POLITICAL  DEVELOPMENTS  FROM  1871  TO  1914  483 


the  order  which  the  Reichsanzeiger  published :  “  I  add  that 
his  Majesty  will  take  no  notice  of  the  wedding!’ 7  The 
Austrian  emperor  refused  Bismarck  an  audience. 

After  Caprivi’s  fall  the  tension  slackened  for  a  time. 
Bismarck  even  visited  Berlin  and  lodged  in  the  royal  palace ; 
and  the  emperor  returned  the  visit  at  Friedrichsruhe.  All 
the  same,  in  1895  the  Reichstag,  by  a  majority  vote,  refused 
to  congratulate  Bismarck  on  his  eightieth  birthday,  all  his 
old  political  enemies  having  vented  their  spleen  in  debate. 
In  vain  a  defender,  von  Kardoff,  declared  that  such  a  vote 

.  .  .<■  .  "  >  f 

would  make  the  Reichstag  “immortally  ridiculous!”  In 
consequence  of  the  vote  the  president  of  the  Reichstag  re¬ 
signed  and  the  emperor  telegraphed  to  Bismarck  his  “  deep¬ 
est  indignation.” 

Soon  Bismarck  committed  an  unpardonable  indiscretion 
by  publishing  his  old  secret  reinsurance  treaty  with  Russia ; 
he  did  it  in  order  to  flay  the  actual  policy  of  the  government. 
There  was  fierce  denunciation  in  the  Reichstag  for  this 
“betrayal  of  a  state  secret,”  and  Eugene  Richter  declared 
that  Bismarck  looked  on  his  dismissal  as  a  dispossession  and 
felt  that  under  any  other  chancellor  he  was  “living  under 
a  foreign  yoke.”  The  Emperor,  too,  was  estranged  once 
more  and  at  the  unveiling  of  a  monument  to  William  I., 
on  which  occasion  Bismarck  had  been  ignored,  spoke  of 
those  who  had  “had  the  honor  to  carry  out”  the  ideas  of 
his  grandfather  and  called  them  “tools  of  his  exalted  will.” 
But  William  soon  forgave  the  old  Titan,  who  was  already 
three-quarters  in  the  grave,  visited  him  once  more,  sent  him 
messages  and  gifts,  and,  when  death  came  in  1898,  did  full 
honor  to  the  remains. 


Publica¬ 
tion  of 
the  “  re-in¬ 
surance  ” 
treaty. 


Two  main  problems  wound  like  the  trail  of  the  serpent 
through  all  the  rest  of  the  reign  :  Alsace-Lorraine  and  social 
democracy. 


484 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Sentiment 
in  Alsace- 
Lorraine. 


Persecu¬ 
tion  of 
the 

teachers. 


No  effort  has  been  spared  to  change  the  anti-German 
sentiment  among  certain  classes  in  the  conquered  pro\inces. 
ft  is  particularly  fierce  among  the  clergy.  One  of  their 
papers,  the  Avenir  Lorrain,  writing  in  September,  1913,  calls 
the  Germans  “disgusting  birds  that  foul  their  own  nests 
and  leave  nothing  but  a  stench  in  the  hand  that  nourishes 
them,”  and  urges  them  to  “get  out  as  fast  as  you  can ;  we’ll 
pay  the  tickets  and  the  cost  of  moving!”  And  a  member 
of  the  legislative  body  in  1909  used  the  following  language : 
“Germany  is  proud  of  her  increase  in  population;  she  may 
be  proud,  too,  of  her  increase  in  dogs!” 

The  clergy  for  one  thing  never  can  forgive  the  loss  of 
their^influence  over  the^chools :  “Compulsion  in  organ¬ 
ization,  compulsion  in  method,  compulsion  in  text-books,— 
compulsion  above,  compulsion  below,  compulsion  e\  er\  - 
where !”  Such  was  the  argument  with  which  the  introduc¬ 
tion  of  the  school  law  of  1873  was  met.  They  wanted  none 
of  the  strictness  and  thoroughness,  none  of  the  “corporal- 
staff  discipline/1  none  of  the  pagan  methods  of  teaching 

history  and  natural  science-  9 

Opposition  to  the  clergy  and  a  closer  study  of  the  German 
school  system  have  made  good  Germans  out  of  the  whole 
teaching  class,  although  for  the  most  part  they  are  nati\  e- 
born.  On  the  other  hand,  they  have  been  made  to  suffer 
a  regular  martyrdom.  They  are  attacked  as  spreaders  of 
false  religion  and  as  a  burden  on  long-suffering  taxpayers. 
They  were  once  branded  as  “bandits”  by  an  Alsace-Lor¬ 
raine  deputy  to  the  German  Reichstag,  although  their  pay 
is  so  low  that  life  can  scarcely  be  sustained  upon  it  and  about 
70  per  cent  have  to  follow  some  side  occupation.  The  maxi¬ 
mum  pay,  only  attained  after  many  years  of  service,  is 
2700  marks  or  675  dollars! 

By  the  irony  of  fate  the  teachers  are  very  dependent  on 
the  good  will  of  the  clergy.  Not  only  have  the  latter,  and 


POLITICAL  DEVELOPMENTS  FROM  1871  TO  1914  485 

their  allies  the  “ notables,”  a  majority  in  the  local  diet  that 
votes  the  school  appropriations,  but  most  of  the  side  occu¬ 
pations  in  which  teachers  can  engage  have  to  do  with  the 
church.  In  connection  with  a  pastor’s  requirement  that  his 
organist  agree  not  to  join  the  German  Lehrerverein,  or  Teach¬ 
ers  Association,  the  Padagogische  Zeitung  recently  came  out 
with  the  strongest  denunciation  of  this  “  obliging  of  teachers 
to  renounce  liberty,  independence,  and  manly  dignity,  in 
fact  to  sell  themselves  body  and  soul.”  The  Teachers’ 
Association  has  always  been  a  thorn  in  the  flesh  to  the 
Alsace-Lorraine  clergy :  “The  teacher  who  joins  the  German 
Lehrerverein ,”  wrote  a  clerical  sheet  in  1909,  “will  no  longer 
be  a  Catholic  teacher  and  will  soon  learn  that  the  state 
neither  can  nor  will  continue  him  in  office.” 

One  reason  for  the  prevalence  of  anti-German  sentiment  Influence 
among  the  women  is  the  fact  that  certain  classesTeguIarly  of  the 
send  their  girls  to  French  convents  and  boarding  schools,  women* 
not  necessarily  for  political  motives,  but  largely  because  of 
the  better  accent  they  will  acquire.  Permeated  with  French 
ideas  they  return  and  marry  in  their  home  circles  but,  as  a 
Strassburg  woman  writes:  “There  is  a  careful  and  well- 
considered  undermining  process  carried  on  by  the  mother 
and  sister  and,  later,  by  the  wife.  Aunts  and  cousins  put 
in  their  little  word,  for  in  Alsace  family  feeling  is  still  very 
strong.  .  .  .  The  man  wants  peace  in  his  household  and, 
wearied  by  the  guerilla  warfare,  at  last  gives  in.” 

Alsace-Lorraine  is  not  in  itself  a  state,  but  is  administered  The  status 
by  the  ,empim  as  ReichslandA  or  imperial  territory.  Cu-  °f  Alsace- 
riously  enough  the  new  constitution,  granted  to  it  in  1911,  Lorraine- 
empowers  it  by  a  legal  fiction  to  pass  as  a  state  in  many  re¬ 
gards.  But  it  has  nothing  to  do  with  military,  railroad,  or 
postal  matters,  may  not  even  determine  what  language 
shall  be  used  in  its^schools^and  may  not  change  its  own 
constitution.  It  has  no  diplomatic  corps,  no  consular 


The 

Statthal- 

ters. 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


service,  no  flag,  no  colors.  Its  chief  executive, is  the  em¬ 
peror,  who  deputes  his  duties  to  a  StatthaMer.  The  em¬ 
peror  appoints  twenty-three  out  of  the  forty-six  members  of 
the  Upper  House  in  the  Diet,  while  the  sixty  members  in  the 
Lower  House  are  chosen  by  free  election.  The  province 
has  three  votes  in  the  Bundesrath,  or  Federal  Council,  and 

eleven  members  in  the  Reichstag. 

The  Statthalters  have  had  no  easy  task,  and  they  seem  to 
have  tried  every  kind  of  policy.  There  have  been  severe 
regimes  and  lax  regimes,  with  no  better  results  in  the  one 
case  than  in  the  other.  Mannteufel,  the  first  StatthaMer,  is 
said  to  have  coddled  the  notables  like  babies,  to  have  made 
visits  which  were  never  returned,  and  given  entertainments 
to  which  no  one  came.  Again  there  have  been  attempts  at 
repression,  where  the  use  of  the  French  language  was  for¬ 
bidden  not  only  in  the  schools  but  in  public  documents,  and 
even  in  street-naming.  The  carrying  of  banners,  the  writing 
of  protests,  the  singing  of  songs,  have  all  been  forbidden  at 
times,  and  freedom  of  the  press  has  been  greatly  curtailed. 

There  are  thoughtful  Germans,  even,  who  think  that  it 
was  a  great  error  to  entrust  the  administration  of  this  gay, 
happy-go-lucky  land  to  stiff,  warlike,  bureaucratic  Prus¬ 
sians.  Bavarians  or  Badeners  would  have  been  more  sym¬ 
pathetic.  The  Alsatian  objects  mightily  to  all  the  petty 
police  regulations  and  to  what  is  known  as  Gesmnungs- 
schnuffelei,  or  poking  one’s  nose  into  other  people’s  private 
opinions.  It_has  been  suggested  that_the_real_sdution  of 
the  difficulty  would  be  to  divide  up  the  province  between 

PrussjaT^aden,  andTB"£fvarTa,  Wiirttemberg  being  compen- 

sSdaVTffitKrprlnh^  Prussla  ^olM 

lmve  the  portion  including  the  great  fortress  of  Metz,  Baden 
the  city  of  Strassburg  and  adjacent  territory,  while  Bavaria 
would  "take  the  part  adjoining  the  Bavarian  palatinate. 
Obliged  to  fight  their  fights  in  three  diets  instead  of  in  one, 


POLITICAL  DEVELOPMENTS  FROM  1871  TO  1914  487 


the  solid  wall  of  opposition  now  presented  in  the  Alsace- 
Lorraine  Diet  would  soon  crumble  away. 

The  emperor  in  his  capacity  as  king  of  Prussia  and 
his  chancellors  in  their  capacity  as  Prussian  prime  ministers 
(all  except  Caprivi,  in  whose  case  the  two  posts  were  tern-" 
porarily  separated)  have  had  to  face  in  the  former  Danish 
and  Polish  provinces  very  similar  problems  to  that  of  the 
empire  in  Alsace-Lorraine.  The  long  and  short  of  the 
Danish  problem  is  that  an  elaborate  system  of  propaganda, 
not  fully  realized  in  Germany  until  1914,  has  kept  Danish 
sentim^L^aliMe_TPLiilg..  province  wrested  from  Denmark  in 
the  war  of -1864.  The  Prussian  Diet,  in  its  last  session  before 
the  present  conflict  broke  out,  occupied  itself  busily  with  the 
subject  and  considered  a  whole  program  of  counter  measures. 

The  Danes,  both  within  and  without  the  province  of  North 
Schleswig^Eelieve  that  they  have  a  double  grievance  in  that 
Prussia  not  only  took  their  territory,  hut  at  the  same  time 
broke  a  solemn  promise  and  agreement,  viz.  toleF  the 
question  of  reunion  with  Denmark  be  decided  by  popular 
vpteL  Into  the  rights  or  wrongs  of  the  complicated  question 
we  need  not  enter.  The  result  has  been  the  formation  all 
over  Denmark  of  so-called  South  Jute  associations  —  there 
are  nearly  sixty  of  them,  with  a  central  control  —  which 
raise  the  funds  for  a  most  systematic  campaign. 

Along  the  southern  Danish  boundary,  like  a  belt  of  forts 
and  earthworks,  ~a~chaln  of  schools  has  been  established. 
Schleswig  children  are  induced  to  attend  them  by  payment 
of  their  expenses  when  necessary,  there  being  a  regular  fund 
for  that  purpose.  The  object  of  these  schools  has  been  well 
defined  by  a  Danish  agitator :  “  Entry  into  them  will  give 
you  a  national  baptism  that  will  retain  its  significance  as 
long  as  you  live!”  Avow  is  said  to  be  required  of  all  chil¬ 
dren  who  receive  financial  aid  that  they  will  return  to 
Schleswig  and  work  for  the  cause.  One  of  the  studies  on 


The 

Danish 

problem. 


Danish 

propa¬ 

ganda. 


The 

Danish 

schools. 


488 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Patriotic 

associa¬ 

tions. 


The 

Polish 

problem. 


which  most  stress  is  laid  is  history ,  of  course  from  the  Danish 
point  of  view. 

North  Schleswig  itself  is  coyered  with  a  networkjiLsecpet 
patriotic  associations :  language  clubs,  gymnastic  and  social 
clubs,  sick-nursing  and  abstinent  societies ;  mortgage  and 
loan  associations  which  look  after  the  economic  interests 
of  the  Danish-minded;  ar_real^state3gfir^  formed  with 
the  direct  design  to  prevent  land  from  falling  into  the  hands  of 
Germans.  Even  religion.  j_s  pressed  into  the  cause,  and  the 
so-called  “Free  Communities”  preach  that  there  is  a  true 
Christianity,  the  Danish,  and  a  false  Christianity,  the  Ger¬ 
man.  The  Danes  began  by  establishing  beer  saloons  as 
centres.  When  the  government  refused  them  licenses  they 
established  “non-alcoholic  guest  houses,”  which  have  be¬ 
come  the  very  hotbeds  of  the  agitation.  The  Danes  have 
expressions  for  them  such  as  breakwaters  against  the 
German  flood”  and  “shelters  for  Denmark,”  and  there  are 

now  more  than  fifty  of  them. 

When  the  Prussian  Diet  closed  in  July,  1914,  it  was  at 
loggerlieads  Yntli  the  Danish  government  with  regard  to  the 
status  of  the  children  o^th&ovtardm,  thpsg,  namely,  who  had 
been  allowed  to  retain  their  Danish  citizenship  while  still 
residing  in  Schleswig.  These  children  had  been  admitted 
to  Prussian  citizenship  in  1907  on  conditiop-that  they  should 
keep  the  peace.  This  they  had  not  dmie^^heiicejthe  reopen- 
ing  of  the  question  with  the  Danish  government. 

Prussia’s  Polish  problem  has  one  feature  that  makes  it 
different  from  either  the  Alsace-Lorraine  or  the  Danish 
question.  For  years  now  —  ever  since  1886,  when  the  so- 
called  Settlement  Commission  was  established  —  the_gpvern- 
ment  has  been  trying  to  make  “  islands  _of  Germanism  in  the 
Pohsh~se^^(the "expression  is  Chancellor  von  Billow  s)  by 
direct  purchase  of  land.  It  has  spent  in  all  well  over  a  bil¬ 
lion  marks.  The  general  plan  was  to_  huy  up  large  estates 


POLITICAL  DEVELOPMENTS  FROM  1871  TO  1914  489 


f^om  impecunious  Polish  nojffes^nd  parcel  them  out. 
German  settlers,  offering  inducements  in  the  way  of  land 
improvements  and  building  loans.  Into  Bismarck's  cal¬ 
culations  there  had  entered  at  the  time  the  belief  that  the 
impecunious  Polish  nobles  would  squander  the  purchase 
money  at  Monte  Carlo,  and  that  the  people,  deprived  of 
their  natural  leaders,  could  be  dealt  with  easily. 

OT  all  ambitious  plans  that  a  statesman  ever  laid  few  have 
turned  out  less  in  accordance  with  the  expectations.  Firstly, 
the  impecunious  Polish  nobles  did  not  squander  their  money 
at  Monte  Carlo,  but  stayed  at  home,  founded  great  banks 
and  fought  the  Prussian  government  with  an  energy  and 
capacity  that  few  would  have  credited  to  them.  *^The  Polish 
fanners,  too,  were  driven  by  adversity  to  cooperate,  and  a 
new  and  totally  unexpected  strength  developed.  Their 
organ,  the  Zwiasku  spolek  zarobkcnvych,  or  Union  bank,  does 
an  even  greater  business  than  the  Ziemski  bank,  the  organ 
of  the  nobles.  The  government’s  endeavors  to  weaken 
Polish  nationalism  have  been  the  very  salvation  of  the 
people;  the  banks  have  undertaken  and  carried  through 
tasks  that  never  before  confronted  institutions  of  the  kind. 
They  have  educated  their  whole  people  to  thrift  and  to  fore¬ 
sight,  entennglhtb  the  private  affairs  of  those  to  whom  they 
loan  money,  teaching  them  to  consolidate  their  debts,  res¬ 
cuing  them  from  usurers,  and  enlightening  them  as  to  proper 
rates  of  interest. 

The  banks  have  boldly  faced  the  Settlement  Commis¬ 
sion,  and  it  maybe  truly  said  that  they  have  beaten  it  on  Its 
owirground.  Prince  Billow  showed  in  November,  1907,  that 
Polish,  purchases  of  land  for  the  purpose  of  parcelling  it  out 
among  their  own  people  exceeded  the  purchases  of  the  Com¬ 
mission  by  nearly  250,000  acres.  The  tide  level  in  the 
“ Polish  Sea”  had  not  only  not  receded,  but  the  waves  had 
lapped  over  into  Silesia  and  driven  out  thousands  of  Ger- 


The  regen 
eration  of 
Poland. 


Polish 

methods. 


490 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Sikorski. 


Bieder- 

mann. 


Legisla¬ 
tion 
against 
the  Poles. 


maus.  After  the  first  few  purchases  the  race  of  impecunious 
Polish  nobles  with  land  to  sell  to  Germans  had  died  out,  and 
the  estates  for  parcelling  had  had  to  be  bought  from  Ger¬ 
mans,  with  the  result  that  prices  had  risen  enormously,  — 
from  an  average  of  216  marks  an  acre  to  one  of  728  marks. 
On  the  horizon  had  risen  daring  Polish  speculators,  working 
on  what  they  were  pleased  to  call  American  methods,  which 
meant  achieving  wonderful  results  by  fostering  the  spirit  of 
speculation  and  blatantly  advertising.  In  1897  one  Ignatius 
Sikorski,  with  literally  no  capital,  started,  a  company  and 
attracted  investors  by  guaranteeing  dividends  of  25  per 
cent  for  six  successive  years,  and  offering  interest  on  deposits 
at  5|  per  cent.  Through  the  medium  of  the  Catholic 
Guide,  the  Word  of  God,  and  other  family  sheets  that 
had  never  been  used  for  such  purposes  before,  he  nfduced 
countless  Polish  workers  in  the  west  to  invest_thelr  earnings 
in  small ^  farms  at  home  and,  for  a  wonder,  not  only  built  & 
solid-stmcture  pnJ5is  flimsy  foundation, ^but  incidentally 
furthered  The  cause'  of  feolishjStoiz^^  immensely. 
Much  the  same  role  was  played  in  Silesia  by  Marcin  Bieder- 
mann,  a  journalist  who  fosteTedULhe,  vanity^ of  rich  Polesjby 
acclaiming  them  as  national  heroes  whenever  Jthey  bought 
land  He  carried  on  a  great  business  of  lyingLilL^aiLfPr 
the  Settlement  Commission,,  and,  buying  in  land  on  which  it 
had  fixed  its  eye,  often  selling  it  finally  at  a  greatly  increased 
price.  Altogether  Biedermann  was  a  sort  of  Robin  Hood, 
taking  from  the  Germans  to  help  the  Poles. 

The  legislators  in  Berlin  left  nothing  undone  in  the  way 
of  drastic  measures  to  stop  the  Polish  land  deals.  They 
required  permits  to  found  new  settlements,  and  permits  to 
build  in  them ;  no  one  might  take  an  isolated  tract  and  offer 
lots  for  sale.  But  a  loophole  had  been  left ;  and  when  a 
Polish  farmer  brought  suit  the  court  in  Berlin  had  to 
decide  against  the  Prussian  government.  It  was  still  law- 


POLITICAL  DEVELOPMENTS  FROM  1871  TO  1914  491 


ful  to  buy  and  build  if  the  land  was  adjacent  to  some  one 
else’s  house,  and  the  peculiar  custom  of  the  old  Polish  nobles 
of  settling  their  peasants  as  far  away  from  themselves  as 
possible  on  the  fringe  of  their  estates  gave  a  superabundance 
of  adjacent  lots. 

In  1907  the  climax  of  government  intimidation  was  The 
reached.  Blilow  informed  the  Prussian  Diet  that  the  two  expropri- 

I  —I—,  — . . .  i.  . . . . . .  . . .  .  •  -I 

great  causes  of  the  government’s  failure  had  been  the  system  all0n  aw 
of  adjacent  parcelling  and  the  fact  that  Polish  nobles  would 
not  sell  to  the  Settlement  Commission.  The_  Commission 
he  declared,  must  be  empowered  to  expropriate  Polish  owners. 

In  spite  of  a  perfect  storm  of  opposition  he  was  able  to  put 
through  a  law  to  that  effect.  The  owners  were  to  be  given 
full  compensation. 

The  law  was  so  unjust  and  so  unpopular  that  it  remained 
a  dead  letter  until  1913  ;  then  four  large  estates  were  seized. 

The  rage  "and  excitement  of  the  Poles  knew  no  bounds. 

“Prussia  is  so  hated  on  both  sides  of  the  boundary,”  writes 
the  ZuJcunft,  a  noted  Berlin  periodical,  “that  any  Pole  who 
lives  there  will  be  ready  to  help  the  enemy.  .  .  .  How  could 
one  still  venture,  in  a  serious  emergency,  to  employ  Poles 
as  soldiers!”  We  have  an  arraignment  of  the  policy,  in 
pamphlet  form,  from  the  pen  of  one  who  was  formerly  him¬ 
self  a  Prussian  official :  “No  insult  could  be  greater  than  for 
a  nation  to  say  ‘  you  are  our  fellow-citizens  but  of  a  different 
nationality  and  therefore  we  shall  buy  you  out,  substituting 
Germans  for  you  in  your  old  homes.’” 

One  result  of  all  the  severe  measures  has  been  to  drive 
the  Polish  farmers  into  the  small  towns.  Here  they  open 
shops  frequented  mainly  by  Poles,  who  have  gradually  in¬ 
vaded  whole  districts,  as  the  German  does  not  like  the 
proximity.  “  The  Pole  stays,  the  German  goes  :  that  is  the 
whole  wretched  Polish  question  in  a  nutshell,”  writes  our 
chief  authority,  Ludwig  Bernhard  ( Die  Polenfrage). 


492 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The 
growth  of 
social 
democ¬ 
racy. 


In  criticising  the  Prussian  government  for  its  Polish 
policy  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  problem  is  difficult  — 
more  difficult  than  that  of  the  American  Indian  or  negro  for 
the  reason  that  the  German  Poles  have  solidly  behind  them 
the  Russian  and  the  Austrian  Poles.  The  German  s  fear  of 
being  engulfed  by  Pan-Slavism  is  not  altogether  unwar¬ 
ranted.  There  was  a  time  in  the  eighties  when  the  influx 
of  Russian  Poles  was  so  great  that  the  Prussian  government 
advocated  banishing  some  thirty  thousand  of  them  as  a 
burden  on  the  state.  It  was  as  an  alternative  that  the 
Settlement  Commission  was  appointed  in  1886  and  was  given 
100,000,000  marks  with  which  to  begin  operations. 

The  great  majority  of  Poles  are  Catholics.  During  the 
Kulturkampf  at  least,  members  of  the  Catholic  clergy  in 
Posen  and  West  Prussia  tried  to  Polonize  German  children  and 
thus  win  them  for  the  church.  The  propaganda  for  having 
religious  instruction  given  in  the  Polish  language  has  twicejed 
to  serious  strikes  on  the  part  of  the  children,  who  refused  to 
answeFquestions"  put~to  Them  in  German.  Some  of  the 
participants  irTclisturbances  at  Wreschen  in  1901  connected 
with  the  school  strike  received  prison  sentences  up  to  two 
and  a  half  years.  In  1906  more  than  50,000  Polish  school 
children  were  “on  strike.”  The  Poles  have  never  tried  to 
conceal  the  fact  that  their  own  nationalistic  hopes  are 
dearer  to  them  than  any  interests  of  the  German  Empire , 
and  when  inclined  to  blame  the  Prussian  government  for  its 
severity  we  must  remember  that,  under  Caprivi,  it  tried  the 
opposite  policy  with  no  greater  success. 

The  government’s  measures  against  social  democracy 
have  been  no  more  successful  than  those  against  nationalistic 
tendencies.  After  Bismarck’s  quarrel  with  the  emperor 
and  the  failure  to  renew  the  anti-socialist  laws  the  party 
began  to  show  great  strength.  In  1890  it  had  thirty-five 
members  in  the  Reichstag;  by  1903  the  number  had  in- 


POLITICAL  DEVELOPMENTS  FROM  1871  TO  1914  493 


creased  to  eighty-three.  There  was  a  sudden  fall,  to  be 
sure,  in  1907,  when  the  party  lost  no  less  than  forty  seats. 

By  an  unholy  alliance  with  the  Centre  it  had  attempted 
to  cut  down  the  government’s  demands  for  men  and  means 
to  suppress  a  rebellion  in  Southwest  Africa.  It  was  said 
that  Billow  in  dissolving  the  Reichstag  had  “  aimed  at  the 
Centre  but  hit  the  Social  Democrats,”  for  the  Centre  lost 
comparatively  few  mandates. 

In  1912  circumstances  had  completely  altered.  The 
other  parties  were  disunited  and  demoralized  and  the  Social 
Democrats  scored  the  greatest  triumph  in  their  history, 
polling  nearly  four  million  votes  and  returning  110  members, 
later  increased  to  111,  to  the  Reichstag.  Even  to  the 
Prussian  Diet,  in  spite  of  the  severe  restrictions  of  the 
three-class  system  of  voting,  the  party  returned  eleven 
members. 

All  this  does  not  mean  that  social  democracy  had  become  The  Re- 
much  more  of  a  menace  than  before.  The  party  is  a  house  vlsl0msts. 
divided  against  itself.  There  is  still  the  old  faction  of  the 
extremists  who  wish  the  state  of  the  future  or  nothing  at  all ; 

Bebel  was  its  leader  up  to  the  time  of  his  death  in  1913  and  Bebel 
Liebknecht  is  probably  its  chief  representative  at  present.  t 
But  gradually  there  has  grown  up  a  very  strong  faction  called 
the  Revisionists  headed  by  the  much  more  moderate  Bern-  Bernstein 
stein.  This  faction,  which  has  its  own  powerful  organ,  the 
Sozialistische  Monatshefte,  would  subject  Marx’s  dogmas  to 
a  revision  and  make  them  conform  more  with  actual  modern 
conditions.  The  theory,  to  take  one  example,  that  capital 
is  thrusting  the  rest  t  of  mankind  into  greater  and  greater 
misery  can  be  refuted  by  tax  lists  and  savings  banks  accounts, 
which  show  that  prosperity  is  spreading  downwards  as  well 
as  upwards.  The  Revisionists  even  go  so  far  as  to  grant 
that  capital  is  not  always  an  unmixed  evil.  They  are  oppor¬ 
tunists  ;  they  will  take  what  they  can  get  in  this  world  and 


494 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Social 
demo¬ 
cratic  in¬ 
con¬ 
gruities. 


Dislike 
for  the 
govern¬ 
ment. 


Schism  in 
the 

Centre 

party. 


not  stake  all  on  one  throw.  They  are  opposed  to  the  idea 
of  a  geneiai£trike  and  have  been  influential  in  securing  the 
dismissal  of  Rosa  Luxemburg,  the  fierce  woman  agitator 
who  is  more  of  an  anarchist  than  a  socialist,  from  the  party. 

It  is  impossible  to  say'Vhich'of"  these  two  factions  holds 
the  balance;  the  lines  are  too  unevenly  divided.  The 
party  as  a  whole  is  often  forced  into  contradictions.  After 
refusing  for  many  years  to  join  in  voting  appropriations,  it 
helped  in  1913  to  pass  the  bill  for  raising  revenues  for  the 
great  army  increase,  against  which  the  conservatives  voted. 
The  temptation  had  been  too  great,  for  the  tax  had  been 
laid  mainly  on  the  property  of  the  rich.  In  December,  1913, 
a  still  more  curious  contradiction  arose.  Angered  at  some 
action  of  the  Deutsche  Bank  with  regard  to  its  officials,  the 
party  discussed  the  withdrawal  of  its  funds,  which  are  very 
considerable.  But  it  was  seriously  argued  that  in  that  case 
the  party  itself  would  have  to  look  after  its  funds,  and  would 
be  playing  the  role  of  a  capitalist. 

Dislike  of  the  government  is^till  a  mark  of  the  good  Social 
Democrat ;  and  hatred  of  the  present  electoral  system,  es¬ 
pecially  the  Prussian  th*ree-class  system,  is  one  of  his  tenets. 
As  lately  as  June,  1914,  at  the  closing  session  of  the  Reichs¬ 
tag,  the  party  stolidly  remained  seated  when  the  final  cheers 
were  demanded  for  the  emperor.  In  1913  the  party  at  its 
yearly  congress  seriously  discussed  the  advisability  of  going 
on  a  birth  strike  in  order  tojrighten  the  government  as  to 
the  future  ofTTTeTarmy. 

In  the  Centre  party  there  has  been  a  schism  very  like 
that  among  the  Social  Democrats.  On  the  one  hand  there 
has  been  the  “Cologne  direction,”  on  the  other  the  “Berlin 
direction”;  and  the  conflicts  between  the  two  have  been 
very  bitter. 

In  March,  1906,  an  article  in  the  Historisch-politische 
Blatter,  by  a  prominent  Centrist,  Julius  Bachem,  created  a 


POLITICAL  DEVELOPMENTS  FROM  1871  TO  1914  495 


great  stir.  It  is  known  as  the  “tower  article,”  for  its  refrain 
was  “  we  must  come  out  of  our  tower 1  ’  —  must  cease  looking 
at  matters  purely  from  a  confessional  point  of  view,  and 
work  for  the  good  of  the  whole  country.  Pope  Pius  X.  took 
a  hand  in  the  game,  and  in  September,  1907,  his  encylic 
de  pascendi  dominici  gregis  classed  the  followers  of  Bachem 
with  inter-confessionalists  and  modernists.  A  literary 
feud  ensued  that  grew  more  and  more  intense  as  time 
went  on. 

On  Easter-Tuesday,  1909,  finally,  Bachem’s  opponents 
organized  a  sort  of  coup  d'etat.  In  a  conference  at  Cologne 
a  number  of  members  of  the  Centre  set  up  a  formula  which 
included  the  statement  that  all  the  party’s  activities  must 
be  “in  accordance  with  the  Catholic  viewpoint.”  Accord¬ 
ing  to  this  formula,  as  the  Bachemites  pointed  out,  the  party 
would  become  involved  in  difficulties  that  were  inextricable. 
It  might  not  even  vote  on  the  Prussian  budget,  for  this 
contained  an  appropriation  for  the  state  church,  which  was 
Protestant.  Even  the  passing  of  the  civil  code  would  have 
been  contrary  to  the  spirit  of  the  formula,  since  it  permitted 
civil  marriages.  In  short  all  future  common  action  with 
other  parties  would  be  impossible  and  —  matters  were  not 
minced  —  his  holiness  the  Pope  would  have  the  final  word 
in  all  military,  naval,  colonial,  commercial,  and  industrial 
questions  in  Germany. 

The  fight  raged  on  until  1912,  when  it  was  finally  settled 
by  the  German  voters,  who  defeated  most  of  those  candidates 
espousing  the  “Berlin”  or  extreme  papal  view.  On  Feb¬ 
ruary  8,  1912,  the  Centre  unanimously  defined  itself  as  “a 
politically  non-confessional  party.” 

The  Centres  goal  has  always  been  the  repeal  of  the  anti- 
Jesuit  laws  of  1872.  One  paragraph  alone,  that  relating  to 
the  banishment  of  individual  Jesuits,  was  repealed  in  1904, 
but  the  opposition  to  the  rest  has  continued.  The  argu- 


Tlie 

Easter- 

Tuesday 

con¬ 

ference. 


The  anti- 

Jesuit 

laws. 


496 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  Con¬ 
servative 
party. 

/ 


ments  advanced  are  that  the  Jesuits  demand  unconditional 
subordination  of  the  state  to  the  church,  that  even  promi¬ 
nent  Catholics  have  condemned  them  as  devils  and  pests, 
and  that  a  pope,  Clement  XIV.,  had  pronounced  them  an 
inveterate  obstacle  to  peace.  Utterances  of  particular 
Jesuits  have  been  cited  to  show  that  they  are  as  dangerous 
as  ever  and  that  they  still  advocate  the  burning  of  heretics. 
The  Osservatore  Romano,  during  the  height  of  the  Kultur- 
kampf,  to  be  sure,  had  claimed  the  Pope’s  right  to  depose  a 
heretic  emperor  and  order  his  subjects  to  expel  him.  As 
late  as  1895,  in  a  well-known  periodical,  a  Jesuit  extolled  the 
Inquisition :  “  Oh,  ye  blessed  flames  kindled  about  the 

stakes !  Through  you  a  few  thoroughly  corrupt  persons 
perished,  but  thousands  upon  thousands  were  saved  from 
the  jaws  of  error  and  from  eternal  damnation.  .  .  .  Oh 
blessed  and  revered  memory  of  Thomas  Torquemada!” 

The  political  party  that  has  undergone  the  least  change 
of  any  is  that  of  the  German  conservatives,  who  are  also 
variously  called  Junkers,  East  Elbians,  and  agrarians,  al¬ 
though  the  terms  are  not  absolutely  interchangeable.  They 
are  strongly  represented  in  the  Prussian  JDiet  but  have  few 
members  in  the  Reichstag  —  only  48  out  of  397.  In  gen¬ 
eral  they  stand  for  kingshijY-Uy^-the-gr^c^  of  God,  for  the 
maintenance  of  authority  at  any  cost,  for  a  great  display  of 
military  force,  for  a  high  tariff  on  agricultural  products,  for 
Prussianism,  and,  in  general,  for  what  are  known  as  reac- 
tionary  measures.  In  1913,  at  a  meeting  of  the  Preussen- 
bund,  or  Prussian  League,  sentiments  were  expressed  that 
raised  a  storm  of  protest  all  over  Germany.  The  Berlin 
Vossische  Zeitung  declared  that,  judged  by  such  standards, 
neither  William  I.,  Frederick  III.,  nor  even  Bliicher,  the  lib¬ 
erator  of  Germany,  would  have  been  eligible  to  the  League. 
But  the  Kreuzzeitung  defended  the  conservatives  and  de¬ 
clared  that  “the  country  must  seek  its  salvation,  not  by 


POLITICAL  DEVELOPMENTS  FROM  1871  TO  1914  497 


merging  Prussia  in  Germany,  but  by  forcefully  maintaining 
the  firmly  stamped  Prussian  individuality/’ 

The  strongest  arraignment  of  the  conservatives  comes 
from  no  less  a  pen  than  that  of  the  Imperial  Chancellor 
Hohenlohe,  himself  a  Bavarian.  Two  years  before  his 
resignation  from  office,  on  Dec.  28,  1898,  he  wrote  in  his 
indiscreet  diary :  “  When  I  sit  this  way  among  the  Prussian 
excellencies  I  see  perfectly  clearly  the  contrast  between 
North  and  South  Germany.  South  Germajn^liberalism  has 
no  chance  against  the  Junkers.  There  are  too  many  of 
them ;  they  are  too  powerful  and  they  have  royalty  and  the 
army  on  their  side.  The  Centre,  too,  goes  their  way.  .  .  . 
All  of  these  gentlemen  snap  their  fingers  at  the  empire  and 
would  prefer  to  abandon  it  to-day  rather  than  to-morrow!” 

This  bitter  arraignment  was  uttered  nearly  twenty  years 
ago.  Since  then  the  Conservatives  have  lost  some  of  their 
power.  A  new  class  of  industrial  princes  has  arisen  with 
fortunes  that  overshadow  those  of  the  Junkers.  The  latter 
are  handicapped  for  the  reason  that  their  lands  are  entailed 
and  go  to  the  one  son,  while  the  daughters  and  younger  sons 
have  to  be  provided  for  with  ready  money.  So  many  estates 
are  heavily  mortgaged  that  a  new  form  of  insurance  has 
been  invented  whereby  the  holder  insures  his  life  for  a  sum 
that  will  later  lessen  the  debt.  In  the  Reichstag  the  num¬ 
ber  of  Conservative  members  has  steadily  decreased  —  from 
eighty  in  1887  to  only  forty-eight  in  1912.  Even  in  the 
Prussian  Diet  there  are  far  fewer  Junkers  than  is  popularly 
supposed.  A  recent  count  has  shown  that  only  about  one 
fourth  of  the  members  of  the  Lower  House  have  so  much 
as  the  “von,”  the  predicate  of  nobility,  before  their  names. 
The  rest  are  plain  Herr  Braun,  Herr  Muller,  Herr  Heinz, 
Dr.  Levy,  etc.  Eighty-three  of  them  are  doctors  of  one 
kind  or  another.  Germany  is  no  feudal  country.  Only  22 
per  cent  of  the  total  territory  is  in  estates  of  over  two  hun- 

VOL.  II  —  2  k 


Decline 
of  the 
J  linkers. 


498 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Foreign 

affairs. 


Morocco. 


dred  and  fifty  acres,  and  this  includes  vast  tracts  of  wood¬ 
land  and  of  unreclaimed  land.  A  whole  school  of  econo¬ 
mists  holds  that  large  estates  are  far  from  being  an  evil 
and  that  the  highest  results  for  agriculture  can  be  obtained 
by  having  large,  medium-sized,  and  small  holdings  exist 
side  by  side.  And  the  small  farmers  are  owners  of  the  land 
they  till  to  a  very  unusual  degree,  only  10  per  cent  working 

rented  land. 

A  mere  sketch  must  suffice  for  the  German  Empire’s 
foreign  policies. 

The  Triple  Alliance  remained  in  force  from  1883  to  1914. 
During  that  time  two  great  storm  centres  developed,  the 
one  in  the  West  and  the  other  in  the  East.  Disputes  regard¬ 
ing  Morocco  led  to  trouble  with  France  and  England,  while 
the  conflicting  policies  of  Austria  and  Russia  in  the  Balkans 

still  further  endangered  the  peace. 

In  1880  an  international  treaty,  signed  at  Madrid  by 
nearly  all  the  powers,  had  settled  the  status  of  Morocco  as 
an  independent  sultanate.  •  In  1890,  after  asking  the  consent 
of  the  other  signatories,  Germany  had  concluded  a  com¬ 
mercial  treaty  with  the  sultan.  In  1901  Germany  s  M^oroc 
can  trade  had  a  value  of  five  million  marks  and  was  increas¬ 
ing  at  a  rate  that  was  to  treble  it  within  ten  years.  Such 
were  the  circumstances  by  which  Germany  justified  her 
interference  when  France  and  England  attempted  in  1905 
to  arrange  the  future  of  Morocco  to  suit  their  own  interests. 
For  several  years  Morocco  had  been  in  a  state  of  unrest,  and 
France,  which  already  owned  Algiers,  had  felt  called  upon 
to  interfere.  Whether  or  not  she  was  aiming  wholly  to 
annex  Morocco  is  a  matter  for  conjecture.  On  the  surface 
it  looks  as  though  she  had  long  been  preparing  the  way  for 
such  a  step.  A  secret  agreement  with  Spain,  two  treaties 
with  Italy,  leaving  the  latter  power  free  hand  in  Iripoli, 


POLITICAL  DEVELOPMENTS  FROM  1871  TO  1914  499 


and  a  rapprochement  with  England  that  was  the  preliminary 
to  the  Triple  Entente  paved  the  way  for  such  a  step.  On 
April  8,  1904,  France  signed  an  agreement  giving  England 
free  hand  in  Egypt ;  a  compliment  which  England  returned 
to  France  by  giving  her  a  free  hand  in  Morocco,  while  a 
secret  clause  gained  the  good  will  of  Spain.  This  treaty 
was  concluded  without  so  much  as  a  notification  to  Germany. 

Germany’s  standpoint,  as  explained  in  the  Reichstag  by 
Chancellor  Biilow,  was  the  following:  “We  have  no  direct 
political  aspirations  there ;  we  have  not,  like  Spain,  a  cen¬ 
turies-old  Moorish  past,  nor,  like  France,  a  Moroccan  boun¬ 
dary  hundreds  of  ‘  kilometers  ’  long ;  we  have  not,  like  those 
two  powers,  historical  and  moral  claims  won  by  many  sac¬ 
rifices.  What  we  did  have  are  economic  interests  in  an 
independent  country  full  of  future  promise.  We  took  part 
in  an  international  convention  which  approved  the  principle 
of  the  most  favored  nation;  by  treaty  we  possessed  the 
rights  of  the  most  favored  nation.  It  was  a  matter  of  Ger¬ 
man  prestige  not  to  have  these  disposed  of  without  our  con¬ 
sent,  a  matter  affecting  the  honor  of  the  German  Empire 
in  which  we  could  not  give  way.”  “It  is  greatly  to  our 
interest,”  Biilow  declared  again,  “that  the  free  regions  of 
the  earth  be  not  still  further  circumscribed;  that  the  path 
be  not  closed  in  a  commercially  important  and  promising 
country  to  the  activities  of  our  industries  and  the  spread  of 
our  commerce.” 

France,  all  the  same,  proceeded  to  “reform”  Morocco 
and  in  such  a  way  that  the  customs,  the  finances,  and  the 
police  would  be  under  her  control  as  “mandatory  of  the 
European  powers.”  The  sultan  of  Morocco  appealed  to 
Germany  and  asked  if  the  order  really  rested  on  a  “  European 
mandate.”  It  was  then  that  William  II.  made  a  most 
dramatic  coup.  On  his  good  ship  Hamburg  he  sailed  to 
Tangiers  and,  being  received  with  jubilation  by  the  Moors, 


Btilow’s 

stand¬ 

point 

on 

Morocco. 


France 

and 

Morocco. 


500 


A  SHORT  H  T  tY  OF  GERMANY 


The  Con¬ 
ference  at 
Algeciras, 
1906. 


War 

imminent. 


declared  that  he  came  as  a  free  and  independent  ruler  who 
hoped  that  Morocco  would  always  be  open  to  the  commerce 
of  the  world.  He  was  met  on  the  sultan’s  part  by  the 
latter’s  uncle,  Abdel-Malek,  and  despatched  an  envoy  of 
his  own  to  Fez.  Greeted  as  “Morocco’s  liberator  and  only 
friend,”  he  induced  the  sultan  to  reject  France’s  “reforms” 
and  call  a  meeting  of  the  signatories  of  the  treaty  of  1880. 
His  whole  visit  lasted  but  three  hours. 

This  meeting  that  had  been  called  by  the  sultan  gave 
place  to  a  Conference  of  the  European  powers  held  at  Al¬ 
geciras.  France  had  objected  strenuously  to  its  being  called. 
Delcasse,  the  foreign  minister,  had  wished,  with  England’s 
aid,  to  administer  a  severe  rebuff  to  Germany.  We  know 
now  from  Delcasse’s  own  revelations  that  England  in  case 
of  a  German  attack  had  promised  to  mobilize  her  fleet, 
occupy  the  Hamburg-Xiel  canal,  and  land  100,000  men  in 
Schleswig-Holstein.  Germany  was  isolated  at  the  confer¬ 
ence,  but  the  mere  fact  of  its  being  held  was  a  triumph  for 
her.  Moreover  she  secured  the  integrity  of  the  sultan’s 
possessions  and  the  “open  door”  in  Morocco. 

But  the  matter  was  still  far  from  settlement.  In  1911 
the  French  occupied  Fez,  and  Spain  the  harbor  of  Larasch 
and  the  neighboring  El-Ksar.  Germany  sent  the  cannon- 
boat  Panther  to  Agadir,  while  Sir  Edward  Grey,  British 
minister  of  foreign  affairs,  made  pointed  remarks  in  the 
hearing  of  the  German  ambassador  as  to  what  England  would 
and  would  not  permit.  In  fact  nothing  would  she  permit 
without  her  own  participation.  As  Chancellor  Lloyd- 
George  expressed  it,  England  was  not  going  to  abandon  a 
position  won  by  centurics^of  heroism  and  success  and  be 
treated  as  though  she  counted  for  nothing  in  the  councils 
of  the  nations.  There  were  circumstances  under  which  peace 
at  any  price  would  mean  humiliation  too  great  to  be  borne. 
Germany  formally  notified  the  British  government  that  “if 


POLITICAL  DEVELOPMENTS  FROM  1871  TO  1914  501 


it  intended  to  confuse  and  involve  the  issue  and  effect  a 
violent  discharge/’  Lloyd-George  was  taking  the  best  means 
to  those  ends  by  making  such  speeches,  a  communication 
which  Sir  Edward  Grey  found  “  extraordinarily  stiff  in  tone.” 
Altogether  the  danger  of  a  European  war  was  greater  in  those 
few  days  of  1911  than  it  had  been  in  a  generation.  The 
turning  of  a  hair  would  have  made  the  difference. 

The  outcome  of  it  all  was  that  by  a  treaty  (Nov.  4,  1911) 
Germany  agreed  not  to  interfere  in  Morocco  and  accepted 
compensation  on  the  Congo,  thus  enlarging  her  colony  of 
Cameroon.  At  home  the  German  government  was  much 
blamed  for  having  achieved  such  poor  results;  abroad  the 
emperor  s  interference  in  the  whole  Morocco  dispute  was 
looked  upon  as  uncalled  for  and  aggressive. 

The  Emperor’s  oft-cited  remark  about  securing  a  “place 
in  the  sun”  was  originally  uttered  not  as  a  programme,  but 
as  stating  an  accomplished  fact.  “We  have  conquered  our 
place  in  the  sun,”  he  said  in  1896,  and  added  that  he  meant 
to  maintain  that  place.  That  he  was  ever  too  modest  in 
his  utterances  no  one  can  maintain :  “  We  are  the  salt  of  the 
earth,”  he  said  in  1895,  “but  we  must  show  ourselves 
worthy  .  .  .  then  we  can  stand  hand  on  hilt,  shield  in  ground, 
and  cry  tamen!  Come  what  may !” 

To  characterize  the  emperor  here  would  be  superfluous. 
One  episode,  however,  throws  light  simultaneously  on  his 
character  and  on  foreign  as  well  as  internal  relations.  On 
October  28,  1907,  in  an  interview  published  by  the  Daily 
Telegraph,  the  emperor  pointed  out  how  he,  personally, 
had  always  been  the  friend  of  England,  how  he  had  refused 
the  invitation  of  France  and  Russia  to  urge  England  to  end 
the  Boer  war :  “  the  English  who  to-day  insult  me,  will  see 
from  it  ( i.e .  from  a  letter  he  had  written  to  the  queen)  how 
I  acted  in  their  moment  of  danger.”  He  declared  that  he 
had  worked  out,  with  his  general  staff,  the  plan  of  campaign 


The 

treaty  of 

1911. 


The 

Daily 

Telegraph 

episode. 


502 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  em¬ 
peror’s 
surrender. 


Compli¬ 
cations  in 
the  Bal¬ 
kans. 


that  Lord  Roberts  successfully  carried  out.  The  English 
need  not  be  disquieted  at  the  increase  in  the  German  fleet ; 
it  was  intended  for  use  in  the  Pacific  against  the  Japanese! 
All  of  which  was  very  indiscreet  and  caused  indescribable 
excitement  in  Berlin,  the  more  so  as  the  emperor  was  away 
at  the  time  and  the  papers  were  full  of  the  rather  bizarre 
entertainments  that  were  being  provided  for  his  pleasure  by 
his  host,  Prince  Egon  Fiirstenberg. 

In  the  Reichstag  Prince  Biilow  tried  to  deflect  the  storm 
on  to  his  own  head.  The  emperor  had  not  a  single  defender. 
Even  the  leader  of  the  Conservatives  spoke  of  a  “discontent 
that  had  been  gathering  for  years.”  Biilow  made  a  manly 
speech  in  which  he  promised  to  prevent  a  recurrence  of  the 
incautiousness.  He  pledged  himself  that  measures  to  this 
end  should  be  taken  “without  injustice  but  yet  without 
any  regard  for  the  person.”  The  interview  between  the 
Chancellor  and  his  master  lasted  for  several  hours  and  the 
emperor  made  a  complete  surrender.  The  official  RcicJiS- 
anzeiger  then  published  what  amounted  to  a  full  apology 
to  the  people  and  a  promise  to  do  better  in  the  future.  For  a 
time  the  emperor  was  like  a  Wotan  with  a  broken  spear, 
but  the  incident  and  its  outcome  in  no  way  permanently 
impaired  his  popularity,  which  has  steadily  increased  as  his 

reign  has  proceeded. 

Regarding  the  difficulties  of  Austria  with  Russia  and  the 
Balkans,  difficulties  which  were  to  prove  so  fateful  for  the 
German  emperor  and  empire,  but  a  few  cardinal  facts  need 
to  be  kept  in  mind.  Practical  ownership  of  Bosnia  and 
Herzegovina  had  been  assured  to  Austria  by  Russia  and  by 
the  Berlin  Congress  in  1878.  In  1908,  however,  Turkey, 
with  a  reformed  government,  grew  more  assertive  of  her  rights 
over  those  provinces.  Austria  decided  on  formal  annexa¬ 
tion.  Russia  and  Servia  put  in  their  oars,  demanding  a 
European  conference  which,  it  vTas  hoped,  would  compensate 


POLITICAL  DEVELOPMENTS  FROM  1871  TO  1914  503 


Russia  by  giving  her  free  passage  through  the  Dardanelles 
and  Servia  in  some  other  way.  But  Austria  in  1909  came  to 
a  private  agreement  with  Turkey  and  paid  her  in  cash  for 
the  provinces.  Germany  showed  her  friendship  for  Austria 
by  procuring  from  the  signatories  of  the  Berlin  treaty  their 
consent  to  Austria’s  move. 

There  remained  the  discontent  of  Russia  and  Servia. 
Russia,  however,  was  still  recuperating  from  her  terrible  war 
with  Japan  and  was  not  eager  for  new  ventures.  Servia,  on 
the  other  hand,  took  a  very  belligerent  attitude.  Many 
Servs  inhabited  the  provinces  in  question;  these  provinces 
had  entered  into  Servia’s  plans  for  future  aggrandizement. 
Her  aspirations  were  thus  nipped  in  the  bud.  She  tried  to 
insist  that  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina  at  least  be  made  autono¬ 
mous  and  that  she  herself  be  compensated  with  other  terri¬ 
tory.  She  claimed  that  even  Turkey’s  consent  did  not  vali¬ 
date  the  new  arrangement  and  harped  on  the  idea  of  the 
European  conference.  She  would  arm  day  and  night,  she 
declared,  and  would  know  how  to  act  if  her  interests  were 
disregarded  :  Europe  should  see  that  only  over  a  dead  Servia 
could  Bosnia  become  an  Austrian  province.  Finally,  how¬ 
ever,  on  March  31,  1909,  having  made  sure  that  Russia  would 
not  help  her,  she  ceased  her  opposition.  She  signed  a  pledge 
to  Austria  “to  abandon  the  attitude  of  protest  assumed  by 
her  since  the  previous  October  with  regard  to  the  opposition ;  ” 
and  again :  “  to  change  the  direction  of  her  present  policy 
towards  Austria-Hungary  and  live  with  that  power  in  future 
on  a  footing  of  friendly  and  neighborly  relations.” 

Bulgaria,  Servia,  and  Greece  had  at  first  greeted  the  new 
“Young  Turk”  regime  with  enthusiasm.  But  the  efforts  of 
the  new  government  to  centralize  and  nationalize,  and  espe¬ 
cially  its  endeavor  to  interfere  with  the  hitherto  practically 
independent  position  of  the  different  religious  bodies,  began 
to  estrange  those  powers.  Soon  the  Turks  came  into  direct 


Servia ; 
1909. 


The 
Balkan 
war  of 

1912. 


504 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The 
Balkan 
war  of 
1913. 


conflict  with  the  free  spirit  of  the  almost  primitive  Albanians, 
who  desired  autonomy.  The  Albanian  question  was,  then, 
one  cause  of  the  overthrow  (early  in  1912)  of  the  Young  Turk¬ 
ish  government.  The  new  government  promised  to  fulfil  the 
demand  for  autonomy. 

Now  Servia  and  Bulgaria  desired  neither  an  independent 
nor  a  powerful  Albania.  Already  the  Albanians  had  begun 
to  spread  out  into  Macedonia,  which  was  looked  upon  as  a 
field  for  Bulgarian  expansion.  There  was  a  feeling,  too,  that 
Turkey  was  now  too  weak  to  offer  successful  resistance. 
With  Russia’s  aid  a  close  alliance  was  effected  between 
Bulgaria  and  Servia,  Greece  and  Montenegro,  and  in  the 
autumn  of  1912  the  fierce  drive  towards  Constantinople 
began.  Kirkkilisse  and  Lule-Burgas  fell  before  the  Bul¬ 
garians  and  Kumanowo  before  the  Servians,  until  finally  at 
Tschataldscha  the  drive  was  checked.  Then  came  a  truce 
and  a  conference  in  London.  The  European  powers  deter¬ 
mined  to  set  up  a  free  Albania  under  its  own  ruler,  the  Prince 
of  Wied.  In  accordance  with  Austria’s  demand  Servia  was 
to  have  no  territory  and  no  port  on  the  Adriatic,  a  provision 
that  was  to  have  great  consequences.  Foiled  in  her  hopes 
of  expansion  in  this  direction,  Servia  turned  her  eyes  on 
Macedonia,  which  she  had  agreed  to  leave  to  Bulgaria  as  a 
happy  hunting-ground. 

The  memory  of  how  the  Balkan  allies  failed  to  agree  on  the 
distribution  of  their  Turkish  booty  is  still  fresh.  Roumania 
came  in  at  the  eleventh  hour  to  secure  her  own  compensation. 
Bulgaria,  which  had  done  the  major  part  of  the  fighting 
against  Turkey,  was  now  forced  at  the  sword’s  point  to 
renounce  the  greater  part  of  her  booty  —  a  considerable 
stretch  of  her  territory  went  to  Roumania,  while  Greece  and 
Servia  divided  between  them  the  greater  part  of  Macedonia. 
Thrace  had  to  be  relinquished  to  the  Turks,  who  were 
able  to  hold  Adrianople  and  the  Maritza  region  because 


POLITICAL  DEVELOPMENTS  FROM  1871  TO  1914  505 


Bulgaria  had  been  forced  to  demobilize  by  her  own  former 
allies. 

The  Peace  of  Bucharest,  which  Bulgaria  was  forced  to  sign 
on  August  10,  1913,  created  a  situation  that  no  one  could 
look  upon  as  permanent.  Turkey  alone  had  reason  to  be 
satisfied  with  the  turn  of  events.  The  provinces  she  had 
lost  had  been  merely  so  much  ballast.  According  to  Field 
Marshal  von  der  Goltz,  who  has  had  much  to  do  with  training 
the  Turkish  army  of  late,  her  military  strength  was  almost 
completely  unimpaired.  All  her  later  successes  in  the  war 
had  been  gained  by  Anatolians.  According  to  statistics 
compiled  by  the  head  of  the  sanitary  administration  in  one 
of  the  armies,  up  to  December,  1912,  16,491  of  these  genuine 
Turks  had  been  wounded  as  opposed  to  539  Armenians, 
Jews,  Osman-Greeks,  Bulgarians,  Servians,  etc. 

Meanwhile  the  Balkan  disturbances  had  brought  the 
great  powers  of  Europe  to  the  verge  of  war  among  them¬ 
selves.  The  situations  created  by  the  various  crises  had 
been  one  of  the  strongest  incentives  to  rivalry  of  armament. 

Already,  in  1887,  in  connection  with  his  septennate  bill, 
Bismarck  had  spoken  of  Germany’s  being  able  to  place  a 
million  men  on  either  border  in  case  of  war.  “No  other 
state  can  imitate  us  in  that,”  he  had  cried,  “we  alone  have 
enough  officers  and  subalterns  to  command  this  enormous 
force.  .  .  .  Should  Germany  be  attacked  the  whole  land 
from  Memel  to  the  Lake  of  Constance  would  flare  up  like 
a  powder-heap  and  show  the  meaning  of  furor  teutonicus. 
Let  foreign  newspapers  threaten  if  they  will.  We  Germans 
fear  God  and  naught  else  in  the  world  !”  By  1914  a  force  of 
a  million  men  on  either  frontier  had  come  to  be  considered 
ridiculously  inadequate.  According  to  the  London  Times  of  - 
March  20,  1914,  the  Russian  minister  of  finance  had  in¬ 
formed  the  Budget  Commission  of  the  Duma  that  appropria¬ 
tions  would  be  needed  to  bring  the  first  line  of  defence  up 


Turkey- 
after 
the  war. 


European 

arma¬ 

ments. 


506 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Fore¬ 
bodings  of 
war. 


to  1,700,000  men.  The  armies  of  Germany  and  France, 
even  on  a  peace-footing,  already  numbered  more  than 
800,000  men  apiece.  In  January,  1914,  according  to  the 
Temps,  the  French  minister  of  finance  declared  to  the 
Budget  Commission  that  the  extraordinary  expenses  alone 
for  the  army  and  navy  would  amount  to  1,800,000,000  francs, 
while  in  ten  years  the  head  of  the  Germany  navy  had  in- 

creased  his  budget  by  400  per  cent. 

It  was  a  fatal  race  that  could  have  but  one  termination. 
Already  in  March  and  April  there  were  dire  prophecies  of 
war,  each  side,  of  course,  accusing  the  other.  In  May, 
however,  a  member  of  the  Russian  Imperial  Council  writes : 

“  In  Russia  people  think  that  Germany  and  Austria  are  arm¬ 
ing  against  Russia,  while  in  Germany  and  Austria  the  reverse 
is  taken  for  granted  of  Russia.”  The  danger  from  the 
rivalry  of  armaments  was  considered  so  great  that  a  con¬ 
ference  between  the  two  parliaments,  the  French  and  the 
German,  was  planned  to  take  place  at  Basel.  The  chief 
task,”  wrote  a  Reichstag  member,  “is  to  point  the  way  by 
which  each  people  can  be  convinced  that  the  other  has  no 
thoughts  either  of  attack  or  of  revenge.”  The  conference, 
took  place  in  June,  1914,  and  was  outwardly  a  most  brilliant 
success.  More  than  half  of  the  members  of  the  German 
Reichstag  attended  in  person.  Among  the  measures  passed 
was  the  creation  of  a  special  news  service  that  should  tell 
the  truth  and  obviate  the  dangers  of  fabricated  news.  “  Basel 
has  done  a  good  piece  of  work,  wrote  the  most  popular 
Berlin  newspaper,  the  Tageblatt:  “henceforth  the  French 
peace  envoys  will  not  hesitate  to  come  to  us  and  with  equal 
joy  and  equal  hope  the  Germans  will  go  to  k  ranee.  .  .  . 
Of  more  importance  than  anything  else  is  the  fact  that  a 
majority  from  the  parliaments  on  both  sides  have  visited 
each  other  and  have  declared  in  the  face  of  the  whole  world 
that  the  old  prejudices  must  be  overcome  and  that  there 


POLITICAL  DEVELOPMENTS  FROM  1871  TO  1914  507 

must  be  a  mutual  understanding  in  the  interests  of  both 
countries.  Good  will,  in  this  case  the  good  will  of  peoples, 
will  prove  stronger  than  the  folly  of  silly  jingoes.” 

This  unprecedented  effort  of  the  two  parliaments  to  stave  Sarajevo, 
off  the  approaching  war  was  supplemented  by  a  visit  of  a 
British  trade  commission  to  Berlin,  where  they  were  feted 
with  enthusiasm  and  by  a  visit  of  the  British  fleet  to  the 
harbor  of  Kiel.  One  would  have  thought  that  an  era  of 
universal  brotherhood  was  dawning  when  the  murder  of 
the  heir  to  the  throne  of  Austria  cast  the  match  into  the 
powder  heap  and  precipitated  the  greatest  struggle  in  the 
whole  history  of  man. 


CHAPTER  XII 


ECONOMIC  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914 


The 

secrets  of 
success. 


Literature:  The  Handbuch  der  Politik,  3  vols.,  has  valuable 
articles  by  experts.  Deutschland  unter  Kaiser  Wilhelm  II.,  Vol  1L, 
is  the  most  recent  comprehensive  treatment  of  the  subject,  contain¬ 
ing  many  articles  from  different  pens.  Helfferich  Deutschlands 
Volkswohlstand ,  1888-1913,  gives  useful  tables  and  data  which  are 
superseded  in  some,  though  not  in  all,  cases  by  the  figures  m  the 
Statistisches  Jahrbuch,  35th  year,  1914.  .  Wygodzinski,  Das  Genoss- 
enschaftswesen  in  Deutschland  (1911)  is  an  exhaustive  and  admi¬ 
rable  treatment  of  the  subject  of  cooperative  societies.  Fo^gr^“ 
culture  see  von  Riimker,  Diedeutsche  Landwirtschaft  (Berlin,  1914). 


What  the  Elizabethan  era  was  to  literature  in  England, 
that  the  present  generation  has  been  to  economic  progress 
in  Germany.  The  results  surpass  anything  that  the  world 
has  ever  seen.  A  slow,  heavy,  contemplative  people  has 
been  organized  into  efficiency  much  as  water  and  steam 
power  have  been  transformed  into  electric  energy.  The 
possibilities  of  coordination  and  cooperation  have  been 
probed  and  made  available  as  never  before.  . 

Let  us  look  at  the  advance  in  agriculture,  in  industry,  and 
in  commerce,  and  then  examine  the  foundations  on  which 
the  progress  is  based :  government  leadership,  organization 
and  cooperation,  scientific  investigation,  and  the  thorough 
training  of  each  individual  worker.  How  much  is  due  to  the 
characteristics  of  the  people,  to  their  honesty,  sincerity, 
devotion  to  duty,  yes  to  their  determination  to  win  at  any 

cost,  must  here  be  left  out  of  account.  ? 

There  was  a  time  in  the  early  nineties  when  Germany  s 
agricultural  prospects  looked  desperate.  Russia  with  an 

508 


ECONOMIC  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  509 


area  forty  times  as  great  had  unlimited  grain  for  export; 
while  on  account  of  the  fall  in  ocean  freight  rates  (between 
1868  and  1900  the  freight  charged  on  a  hundred  pounds 
between  Chicago  and  Liverpool  had  been  reduced  from  3^ 
shillings  to  only  1  shilling)  it  was  almost  more  economical  to 
buy  grain  from  the  United  States  or  even  from  the  Argentine 
Confederation  than  to  grow  it  at  home.  The  soil  of  Germany 
was  unfavorable  in  comparison  with  those  other  countries, 
and  many  would  not  have  been  sorry  to  let  the  sandy  plains 
in  the  North  revert  to  pine  forest  and  become,  like  England, 
an  industrial  country  importing  the  greater  part  of  its  food¬ 
stuffs. 

One  must  give  the  devil  his  due  and  acknowledge  that  it 
was  the  Junkers  who  saved  Germany  from  this  fatal  course. 
Many  ascribe  all  their  acts  to  self-interest ;  but  there  are  all 
grades  even  among  Junkers,  and  there  is  among  them  as 
much  concern  for  the  good  of  the  nation,  as  they  see  it,  as  is 
to  be  found  in  any  other  class  of  men.  In  answer  to  their 
clamors  the  tariff  on  grain,  which  had  been  lowered  under 
Caprivi,  was  once  more  raised  and  everything  was  done  to 
increase  the  yield  of  the  crops.  To-day  Germany’s  agricul¬ 
tural  products,  counting  the  industries  directly  dependent 
on  them,  such  as  sugar  refineries  and  distilleries,  potato 
drying  establishments,  etc.,  have  a  yearly  value  approxi¬ 
mating  twelve  billion  marks.  How  new  machinery  has 
replaced  the  old,  slow  hand  labor  may  be  gathered  from  the 
fact  that  in  1882  less  than  20,000  mowing  machines  were  in 
use,  in  1907  more  than  300,000  !  Stated  in  other  terms  this 
is  an  increase  of  1435  per  cent !  The  population  has  risen 
from  40,000,000  in  1870  to  67,000,000  in  1913  and,  besides, 
twice  as  much  meat  per  head  is  consumed  to-day :  yet  the 
country  has  succeeded  in  raising  95  per  cent  of  the  meat  that 
it  needs,  whereas  England  imports  about  45  per  cent  of  all 
her  meat.  In  the  matter  of  what  is  known  as  intensive  cattle 


Agricul¬ 
ture  in  the 
nineties. 


The 

Junkers 

save 

Germany. 


The  show¬ 
ing 

to-day. 


510 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Germany’s 
grain  and 
potato 
crops. 


raising  Germany  has  been  surpassed  only  by  the  little  states 
of  Holland,  Belgium,  and  Denmark.  The  last  animal  census, 
in  1913,  showed  twenty-two  million  pigs.  Curiously  enough 
poultry  seems  to  have  been  neglected.  Duties  are  paid  on 
eggs  entering  the  country  to  the  extent  of  some  200,000,000 
marks  a  year,  while  from  Russia  alone  7,387,454  geese  were 
imported  in  1913.  Horse  and  dog  meat  are  both  sold 
publicly,  but  have  to  pass  inspection.  More  than  150,000 
horses  and  7000  dogs  are  on  the  records  for  1913. 

A  weakness  of  Germany  lies  in  the  fact  that  she  has  had 
to  import  so  much  of  her  grain  —  about  two  million  tons  of 
wheat,  three  million  tons  of  barley,  and  one  million  tons  of 
corn.  She  grows  wheat  and  she  grows  barley,  but  not  in  suffi¬ 
cient  quantities ;  while  corn  does  not  seem  adapted  to  her 
soil  and  climate.  Rye  grows  well,  on  the  other  hand,  and  is 
exported  to  the  extent  of  nearly  a  million  tons;  while 
potatoes  are  grown  in  quantities  that  no  other  country  can 
even  approximately  equal.  Year  by  year  the  huge  crops  have 
increased,  with  only  an  occasional  set-back  due  to  natural 
conditions  :  43  million  tons  in  1903,  fifty  million  tons  in  1912, 
sixty-four  million  tons  in  1915.  The  average  harvests  are 
now  at  least  80  per  cent  greater  than  they  were  in  1887,  for 
not  only  has  the  area  cultivated  increased,  but  the  yield  to 
the  acre  has  made  phenomenal  strides.  It  is  a  commentary 
on  the  relative  excellence  of  the  methods  of  agriculture  in 
the  two  countries  when  we  find  that  in  1912,  with  three 
million  more  acres  under  cultivation  with  the  crop  than 
Germany,  Russia’s  actual  yield  was  nineteen  million  tons 
less  !  But  in  yield  to  the  acre  Germany  excels  every  country 
on  the  globe,  not  only  as  regards  potatoes,  but  also  as  regards 
wheat,  rye,  barley,  and  oats.  In  the  past  ten  years  her  own 
average  yield  of  grain  per  acre  has  increased  by  150  pounds. 
It  needs  only  an  increase  of  another  hundredweight  per  acre 
to  make  her  self-supporting,  entirely  independent  of  foreign 


ECONOMIC  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  511 


countries;  and  that  estimate  is  made  on  the  basis,  of  the 
area  now  under  cultivation,  whereas  there  are  millions  of 
acres  of  swamp  land  that  can  be  reclaimed. 

A  crop  that  coins  money  for  Germany  is  the  sugar  beet. 
In  1910,  354  sugar  factories  extracted  the  sugar  from  more 
than  15J  million  tons  of  beets ;  and  the  value  of  the  output, 
about  one  third  of  which  was  exported  to  England,  amounted 
to  some  625  million  marks.  In  1912  more  than  ten  million 
acres  were  planted  to  sugar  beets  as  opposed  to  only  six  and 
a  half  million  in  1887. 

The  few  instances  we  have  studied  will  suffice  as  illustra¬ 
tions  of  Germany’s  agricultural  progress.  But  perhaps  the 
best  products  from  the  farms  are  the  men  and  women  who 
work  on  them.  The  statistics  from  the  country  are  in  the 
most  marked  contrast  to  those  from  the  cities.  The  birth 
rate  is  higher,  as  is  also  the  proportion  of  those  fit  for  military 
service  who  present  themselves  at  the  regular  yearly  muster. 
Latterly  there  has  been  a  great  increase  in  the  number  of 
women  employed  on  the  farms  :  two  and  a  half  million  accord¬ 
ing  to  the  agricultural  census  of  1882 ;  four  and  a  half  million 
according  to  the  census  of  1907.  They  are  for  the  most 
part,  of  course,  members  of  the  family  of  the  owners  of  the 
farm.  The  increase  is  mainly  due  to  the  fact  that  the  men 
migrate  to  the  industrial  centres  and  it  is  a  blessing  that  the 
women  are  willing  to  step  into  the  breach.  The  rough  work 
on  the  farms  has  of  late  more  and  more  been  done  by  so- 
called  seasonal  workmen  —  a  rather  low  grade  of  foreigners, 
for  the  most  part  Russian  Poles,  who  wander  about  in  bands 
and  break  up  the  land  or  gather  in  the  harvests.  Even 
women  go  round  in  such  bands.  The  German  has  felt 
humiliated  at  having  to  employ  these  foreigners,  about  half 
of  whom  turn  to  industry,  half  to  agriculture.  They  are 
obliged  to  take  out  cards  of  legitimation  and  to  quit  the 
country  by  a  given  day.  Not  far  from  a  million  such  cards 


The  sugar 
beet. 


The 

workers  on 
the  farms. 


512 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Industrial 

develop¬ 

ment. 


Output 
of  coal. 


were  issued  in  1913.  The  Polish  women  are  immensely 
powerful  ;  the  author  has  seen  them  excavating  for  an 
artificial  lake  and  throwing  the  earth  far  above  their  heads 

into  cars  that  waited  on  the  rails. 

If  we  turn  now  to  industry  its  achievements  since  the 
founding  of  the  empire  have  been  still  more  remarkable  than 
those  of  agriculture.  After  1871  the  spirit  of  enterprise  ran 
high,  and  there  was  enormous  expansion  due  largely  to  the 
fact  that  France’s  indemnity  of  five  billion  francs  found  its 
way  indirectly  into  hundreds  of  undertakings.  There  was 
wild  speculation,  finally;  company  after  company  was 
formed,  building  after  building  erected.  But  it  was  too  great 
a  discounting  of  the  future.  In  1873  came  a  crash  from  which 
the  country  did  not  recover  for  fully  ten  years.  Many 
wished  that  the  indemnity  had  never  been  exacted,  and  a 
French  authority  asserts  that  Germany  would  willingly  have 
returned  the  sum  to  France  but  that  France  would  have 
refused  to  accept  it.  One  is  reminded  of  the  ring  of  the 
Nibelungen  that  brought  such  ill  luck  to  all  of  its  possessors. 
What  Germany  had  gained,  however,  was  valuable  expe¬ 
rience  ;  and  the  growth  during  the  eighties,  if  slow,  was  based 
on  firm  foundations.  There  were  fluctuations,  of  course, 
as  in  1907,  when  the  panic  that  had  such  severe  consequences 
in  America  affected  the  whole  world.  But  the  year  1912 
may  be  looked  upon  as  the  high  tide  of  prosperity  in  the 
history  of  the  German  Empire,  and  it  is  doubtful  if  for 
decades  to  come  the  same  magnificent  showing  will  be  made 
again.  It  is  a  significant  fact  that  in  that  year  the  emigra¬ 
tion  figures  fell  to  18,545,  a  vast  contrast  to  1881,  when  they 
reached  220,902.  England’s  emigration  figures  for  1912 
were  467,762;  and  Italy’s,  711,446  ! 

In  determining  the  extent  of  a  country’s  economic  progress 
the  output  of  such  basic  products  as  coal  and  iron  will 
always  be  an  important  factor.  From  iron,  of  course,  all  the 


ECONOMIC  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  513 


machinery  of  industry  is  made,  while  coal  still  supplies  the 
greater  part  of  the  motive  power.  Germany’s  finest  coal 
regions  are  in  Westphalia  and  in  Silesia.  Near  Essen, 
Werden,  Dahlhaiisen,  and  in  a  few  other  places  it  crops  to  the 
surface,  but  as  a  rule  the  coal  is  very  far  down  in  the  bowels  of 
the  earth.  In  the  Ruhr  valley,  where  are  some  of  the  richest 
mines,  the  veins  or  strata  are  shallow  and  are  separated  from 
each  other  by  layers  of  limestone  and  slate,  a  condition  of 
things  which  makes  mining  especially  difficult.  A  single 
shaft  may  run  through  sixty  or  seventy  such  layers,  and  more 
accidents  occur  from  the  falling  slate  and  stone  than  from 
explosions.  The  total  German  coal  supply  is  roughly  esti¬ 
mated  at  a  hundred  billion  tons,  though  it  is  believed  that, 
could  certain  difficulties  of  mining  be  overcome,  double  that 
amount  could  eventually  be  extracted.  In  1912  Germany 
mined  no  less  than  240  million  tons,  besides  importing 
17  million  tons.  This  is  less  by  36  million  tons  than  England 
and  far  less  than  the  United  States  of  America ;  but  the  in¬ 
teresting  fact  to  note  is  that  Germany  has  trebled  her  output 
since  1886.  In  the  Ruhr  valley  alone  there  are  nearly  350 
shafts  and  more  than  300,000  miners  are  employed. 

Of  iron  ore  Germany  produces  more  and  of  a  better  quality  Iron 
than  any  other  country  in  Europe;  yet  so  great  are  her  output, 
requirements  for  her  manufactures  that  she  is  at  the  same 
time  the  largest  importer,  having  purchased  in  1913  alone 
more  than  fourteen  million  tons.  In  1902  she  was  turning  out 
the  same  quantity  of  pig  iron  as  England,  which  was  less  than 
nine  million  tons,  while  by  1912  she  had  almost  doubled 
England’s  output.  Between  1887  and  1911  the  one  country 
increased  her  production  by  387  per  cent,  the  other  by  only 
30  per  cent.  For  steel  the  showing  is  still  more  amazing. 
Germany’s  output  increased  between  1886  and  1910  from 
954,600  tons  to  13,698,600  or  1335  per  cent  as  opposed 
to  England’s  154.1  per  cent.  Characteristic  of  German 

VOL.  II  —  2  L 


514 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Iron 

manu¬ 

factures. 


Increase 
in  the  use 
of  elec¬ 
tricity. 


methods  is  the  extent  to  which  old  iron  is  utilized.  Nearly 
210,000  tons  of  it  were  imported  from  France,  Belgium,  and 
Holland  in  1913,  while  the  Saxon  railroads  alone  furnished 
17,000  tons.  Yearly  the  conversion  of  scrap  and  of  old 
iron  plays  a  more  and  more  considerable  role,  and  it  is  esti¬ 
mated  that  by  1940  as  much  pig  iron  will  be  made  in  this 
way  as  from  the  fresh  ore. 

There  is  no  end  to  the  variety  of  Germany’s  iron  manu¬ 
factures.  One  firm  alone,  the  M.  A.  N.  (Machine  Works 
Augsburg-Nuremburg),  turns  out  iron-ribbed  festival  halls, 
bridges,  viaducts,  ship-landings  for  dangerous  coasts  like 
the  one  at  Duala,  dry-docks,  Zeppelin  sheds,  and  even  huge 
roller  dams  to  stem  but  not  stop  the  tide  of  rivers.  Such 
products,  even  the  roller  dams,  it  exports  to  all  parts  of  the 
world.  Yet  the  M.  A.  N.  is  by  no  means  the  largest  iron 
foundry  in  Germany.  Machinery  headed  the  list  of  the 
country’s  exports  in  1912,  with  a  total  value  of  well  over  six 
hundred  million  marks,  while  the  value  of  the  other  iron- 
products  came  to  almost  as  much  more.  The  value  of  the 
machinery  exported  has  increased  more  than  tenfold  since 
1887,  for  it  amounted  in  that  year  to  only  52,800,000  marks. 

The  increase  in  the  use  of  electricity  both  for  lighting  and 
for  industrial  purposes  is  almost  as  good  a  gauge  of  the 
country’s  prosperity  as  is  her  output  of  coal  or  iron.  The 
4000  public  electric  plants  now  in  use  represent  a  capital  of 
more  than  three  billion  marks,  while  some  of  the  private 
plants  rival  the  public  ones.  It  has  been  reckoned  that 
50,000  men  have  been  employed  each  year  in  erecting  new 
plants  or  enlarging  old  ones.  No  less  than  17,500  com¬ 
munities  had  current  at  their  disposal  in  1913,  seven  thou¬ 
sand  more  than  in  1911 !  Motors  have  been  installed  in 
even  the  smallest  shops,  and  the  work  of  many  a  sempstress 
has  been  lightened  by  an  electric  attachment  to  her  machine. 
High  tension  lines  bring  current  to  at  least  two-thirds  of  the 


ECONOMIC  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  515 


population;  the  power  is  obtained  wherever  it  can  be  had 
most  cheaply,  often  near  the  mouth  of  a  mine  or  occasionally 
in  the  midst  of  a  peat-bog.  Many  square  miles  of  such  bogs 
are  now  being  reclaimed  for  agricultural  and  for  settlement 
purposes,  and  the  bogs  themselves  supply  the  power  for  their 
regeneration.  In  Bavaria  the  state  has  practically  made 
electric  power  from  watercourses  a  monopoly,  and  the  current 
is  to  be  distributed  in  the  manner  that  will  best  promote 
the  welfare  of  the  inhabitants.  In  consequence  of  the 
spread  of  the  use  of  electricity  Germany  has  worked  up  a 
flourishing  industry  in  electric  appliances,  her  exports,  not 
including  cars,  vans,  and  cycles,  having  attained  a  value  of 
300,000,000  marks. 

It  would  be  monotonous  to  give  an  account  in  detail  of 
the  progress  made  in  all  the  different  industries.  Some  idea 
of  that  progress  as  a  whole  may  be  gained  in  other  ways. 
For  one  thing,  by  observing  the  growth  of  a  new  form  of 
business  enterprise,  the  limited  liability  company.  First 
permitted  and  legalized  in  1892,  there  were,  by  1909,  no  less 
than  16,500  such  companies.  ’Again  the  fact  that  between 
1885  and  1911  the  tonnage  of  German  ocean-going  ships 
has  trebled  is  illuminating.  During  the  same  period  the 
total  tonnage  of  American  and  of  French  ships  has  scarcely 
increased  at  all.  Germany  in  1913  had  a  total  foreign  trade 
of  twenty-two  and  a  half  billion  marks,  outstripping  the  for¬ 
eign  trade  of  the  United  States  of  America  by  four  billion 
marks.  Yet  the  United  States  has  a  much  greater  popu¬ 
lation  and  a  territory  sixteen  times  as  large.  Germany’s 
trade  still  lags  behind  Great  Britain’s,  but  has  grown  since 
1887  by  214  per  cent  as  opposed  to  England’s  growth  of 
only  113  per  cent.  Already  in  1887  it  had  overhauled 
France’s  trade ;  in  1913  it  surpassed  that  trade  by  as  much  as 
ten  billion  marks ! 

Nor  does  foreign  trade  by  any  means  tell  the  whole  story : 


Other 

indications 

of 

progress. 


516 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Inland 

traffic. 


The 

Prussian 

state 

railways. 


the  increase  in  inland  traffic  is  equally  phenomenal.  The 
German  railways  more  than  doubled  their  trackage  between 
1895  and  1911,  and  the  same  is  true  of  the  rolling  stock  and 
of  the  number  of  employees.  The  amount  of  freight  carried 
on  the  railroads  has  increased  from  approximately  four 
hundred  million  tons  in  1903  to  seven  hundred  million  tons 
in  1912,  the  number  of  passengers  from  950  million  to  1750 
million.  The  number  of  boats  plying  the  rivers,  lakes,  and 
canals  has  risen  from  20,000  to  30,000  since  1887,  and  4000  of 
them  are  now  propelled  by  their  own  power.  The  secret 
of  all  this,  as  I  have  intimated,  lies  in  government  initiative, 
example,  and  control ;  in  organization  on  the  part  of  the 
people  themselves;  in  scientific  investigation  that  gives  a 
sound  basis  for  progress;  and  in  the  training  of  the  individual. 

As  an  example  of  what  government  initiative  and  control 
can  accomplish  one  need  only  point  to  the  Prussian  state 
railroads,  the  consolidation  of  which  we  have  described  in  the 
previous  chapter.  What  private  railroads  still  exist  in 
Prussia  are  there  because  the  state  encourages  them ;  it 
even  subsidizes  small  lines,  having,  alone  in  that  way, 
expended  109  million  marks  up  to  April,  1912.  The  small 
lines  serve  as  feeders  to  the  large  ones,  and  nearly  all  end  at 
the  main  railroad  stations.  The  gross  capital-investment 
of  the  Prussian  state  was  reckoned  in  1911  at  more  than 
eleven  billion  marks.  For  1912  the  net  profit  w^as  539,954,000 
marks.  The  state  is  assured  of  a  regular  yearly  revenue  by 
the  establishment  of  a  huge  fund  or  Ausgleichfonds  designed 
to  insure  against  chance  fluctuations  in  earnings.  The  finan¬ 
cial  showing  is  altogether  of  the  most  brilliant,  although 
there  are  many  other  benefits  besides  the  earning  of  revenue. 
In  time  of  war  there  is  a  vast  difference  between  owning  the 
means  of  transportation  and  having  to  hire  them.  Or, 
again,  the  most  delicate  adjustments  are  possible  when  it  is 
a  matter  of  encouraging  trade  or  dampening  foreign  com- 


ECOMOMIC  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  517 


petition.  Since  1888  the  Prussian  railways  have  issued 
approximately  100  important  special  or  exceptional  rate- 
tables.  There  are  even  so-called  “  regular  exceptional  rate- 
tables”  —  one  for  wood,  one  for  goods  forwarded  in  a  mass, 
such  as  earth,  ore,  potatoes,  sugar  beets,  etc.  There  is  a 
special  rate-table  for  potash  in  the  rough,  another  for  agri¬ 
cultural  lime,  another  for  road-making  materials.  When 
Germany  needs  meat  from  Holland  the  rates  are  made  low, 
when  Holland  is  likely  to  import  from  Germany  the  reverse 
is  the  case. 

There  are  few  countries  in  the  world  that  can  point  to  a 
steady  average  decrease  of  rates  in  the  last  twenty-five  years, 
yet  that  is  Prussia’s  happy  position.  Between  1888  and  1911 
the  average  charge  per  ton  has  decreased  from  4.27  marks  to 
four  marks ;  while  the  average  kilometer-ton  has  sunk  from 
3.71  pfennige  to  3.51  pfennige.  The  general  passenger  rates 
in  force  in  1914  had  been  established  in  1907  with  a  loss  of 
income  to  the  railroads  of  15,600,000  marks,  —  a  loss  made 
up  only  to  the  extent  of  nine  million  marks  by  withdrawing 
the  privilege  of  free  baggage.  Comparison  with  the  rates 
of  other  countries  is  rendered  impossible  by  the  fact  that 
bulkier  freight  like  coal  and  iron  is  transported  by  water 
wherever  possible,  by  all  the  rebates,  by  the  extra  payment 
for  certain  trains,  by  the  many  classes  for  passengers, 
by  the  above-mentioned  restriction  as  to  baggage,  and 
by  the  frequent  special  reductions  for  excursions  and  on 
holidays. 

The  benefits  of  the  Prussian  railway  system  are  by  no 
means  purely  local.  There  is  now  such  close  cooperation 
between  the  states  that  the  utmost  unity  prevails.  By  an 
agreement  made  in  1909,  if  you  hire  a  freight  car  and  load  it 
with  your  goods  it  can  go  from  end  to  end  of  the  empire 
without  annoying  formalities,  and  the  empty  car  need  not 
even  be  returned  to  the  state  from  which  it  started.  In 


Railroad 

rates. 


Unity  of 
the  whole 
German 
system. 


518 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Water¬ 

ways. 


Canals. 


the  same  way  you  can  purchase  a  direct  passenger  ticket  to 
any  destination. 

Although  canals  and  natural  waterways  are  the  chief 
rivals  of  the  railways,  the  Prussian  government  has  spent 
enormous  sums  on  their  development.  One  can  travel 
for  weeks  on  the  water  in  central  Germany ;  it  is  a  favorite 
sport  with  school  crews.  By  canals  scheduled  for  completion 
in  1914  one  can  travel  from  the  Rhine  to  the  Ems  and  Weser, 
each  of  which  rivers  is  in  the  centre  of  a  new  system  of  harbors 
and  canals.  A  project  had  been  started  for  a  deep,  broad 
canal  to  leave  the  Rhine  at  Wesel  and  divert  all  its  traffic 
to  the  sea  at  Emden,  thus  altogether  avoiding  Holland. 
Much  has  already  been  done  in  the  way  of  deepening  river 
channels,  much  more  was  in  prospect.  On  her  own  portion 
of  the  Rhine  alone  Prussia  has  already  expended  twenty 
million  marks,  while  Bavaria,  Baden,  and  Alsace-Lorraine 
are  at  work  deepening  the  river  to  an  average  depth  of  seven 
feet  between  Mannheim  and  Strassburg.  A  further  plan 
to  make  the  river  navigable,  or  build  canals,  all  the  way 
to  the  Lake  of  Constance  is  under  discussion,  and  a  special 
international  association  exists  with  that  end  in  view ; 
while  Wiirttemberg  had  already  determined  to  regulate 
the  depth  of  the  Neckar.  Bavaria  was  seriously  discuss¬ 
ing  a  most  ambitious  plan  to  run  a  wide  canal  from  the 
River  Main  to  the  Danube  and  on  to  Munich  and  Augsburg, 
at  a  cost  of  hundreds  of  millions  of  marks. 

As  our  only  object  is  to  show  in  broad  outline  in  what 
ways  the  German  governments  seek  to  further  commerce 
there  is  no  need  to  enumerate  all  the  canals  built  or  to  men¬ 
tion  all  the  projects  on  hand.  Roughly  speaking  two  and 
a  half  billion  marks  have  been  expended  on  inland  water¬ 
ways  during  the  present  reign,  and  the  spending  of  as  much 
more  was  in  nearer  or  more  distant  prospect.  Some  of  the 
canals  are  no  inconsiderable  feats  of  engineering.  Not  to 


ECONOMIC  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  519 

speak  of  the  broad  Kiel-Hamburg  canal,  built  at  an  expense 
of  379  millions,  the  new  Berlin-Stettin  canal,  opened  in  June 
1914,  has  very  interesting  features.  The  water  passes  over 
a  deep  valley  on  an  earthen  arch  or  bridge,  and  one  can 
stand  and  watch  the  strange  sight  of  ships  sailing  above  and 
trains  passing  through  below.  Again,  the  water  which  escapes 
from  one  part  of  the  canal  is  made  to  generate  the  electricity 
that  pumps  water  back  into  another  part. 

One  of  the  noteworthy  developments  of  the  last  quarter 
century  is  the  inland  harbor,  the  building  of  which  is  usually 
the  concern  of  the  city  governments.  There  are  harbors  which 
are  strictly  commercial  and  there  are  also  so-called  industrial 
harbors  where  factories  and  warehouses  are  built,  each  with 
direct  access  to  the  water.  The  cities  along  the  great  rivers 
buy  large  tracts  of  low-lying  land  and  then  cut  canals  and 
cross  canals  just  as  though  they  were  laying  out  streets. 

The  walls  of  these  blind  canals  are  of  stone  or  reinforced 
concrete,  are  built  very  solidly,  and  have  every  facility  for 
landing  the  boats  and  for  lifting  the  cargoes.  Frankfort 
has  great  travelling  cranes  that  seem  endowed  with  almost 
human  intelligence  as  they  run  and  turn  and  twist  and  pull. 

Duisburg,  the  largest  of  the  many  Rhine  harbors,  has  Duisburg, 
an  area  of  a  thousand  acres  of  which  only  about  one-half  is 
water.  Lying  in  the  heart  of  the  great  iron  and  coal  districts 
and  with  the  broad  Dortmund-Ems  canal  running  from  it,  it 
had  a  traffic  of  more  than  forty-one  million  tons  in  1910,  and 
is  comparable  only  to  Hamburg.  Other  important  harbors 
are  those  of  Berlin,  Mannheim,  Diisseldorf  and  Cologne.  Mann- 
The  Mannheim  harbor,  at  the  junction  of  the  Neckar  and  heim- 
the  Rhine,  covers  about  700  acres  and  represents  an  enormous 
amount  of  planning  and  of  labor.  It  is  said  of  it  that  where 
now  there  is  land  there  was  formerly  water,  and  where  now 
there  is  water  there  was  formerly  land.  Through  this 
development  of  its  facilities  for  traffic  Mannheim  has  become 


520 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


LudwigS' 

hafen. 


Diissel- 

dorf. 


Govern¬ 

mental 

solicitude. 


the  granary  of  Germany  and  also  the  centre  for  the  distribu¬ 
tion  of  the  American  Standard  Oil  Company’s  products. 
It  is  the  destination  for  cargoes  from  all  over  the  world 
that  are  transshipped  in  Holland.  The  railroad  tracks  run 
to  the  very  point  where  the  Neckar  and  Rhine  meet,  and  here 
are  the  great  oil  vats  from  which  the  tank  cars  are  filled  by 
means  of  great  tubes. 

Directly  across  the  Rhine  from  Mannheim  and  almost  a 
part  of  the  same  harbor  system  is  Ludwigshafen,  the  site  of 
the  world-renowned  Baden  Aniline  and  Soda  factory,  which 
turns  out  a  great  proportion  of  the  dyes  used  in  industry. 
The  traffic  of  the  greater  Mannheim  harbor,  if  we  may  so 
call  it,  has  risen  from  less  than  a  million  tons  in  1875  to  nearly 
ten  million  in  1912.  Diisseldorf’s  harbor  was  not  completed 
until  1896,  since  which  time  her  population  has  risen  from 
180,000  to  397,000  and  her  water  traffic  from  four  hundred 
thousand  tons  to  a  million  and  a  half  tons,  —  an  eloquent 
argument  for  inland  harbors.  Canals  have  their  harbors, 
too.  Along  the  new  Duisburg-Hanover-Minden  canal  pro¬ 
vision  has  been  made  for  no  less  than  sixty-five  of  them  at  a 
cost  of  47,000,000  marks. 

Providing  cheap  transportation  facilities  is  but  one  way  in 
which  German  state  and  municipal  governments  aid  industry 
and  commerce.  They  aid  them  also  by  favorable  taxation 
and  by  protective  legislation.  These  are  subjects  too  deep 
for  us  to  enter  into  here,  but  with  regard  to  the  first  point  one 
could  instance  the  separate  special  tax  that  is  laid  upon  the 
large  department  stores  so  as  to  handicap  them,  as  it  were, 
and  prevent  their  crowding  out  the  smaller  tradespeople. 
As  to  protective  legislation  nothing  could  be  more  drastic 
than  the  laws  of  1909  against  unfair  competition. 

These  laws  affect  not  merely  the  petty  tradesmen  but  even 
the  great  enterprises  and  concern  themselves  with  the  follow¬ 
ing  evils :  unjustifiable  assertions  in  advertising,  fake  clear- 


ECONOMIC  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  521 


ance  and  bankrupt  sales,  spreading  calumnies  about  com¬ 
petitors,  betraying  trade  secrets,  misusing  labels,  bribing 
employees,  and  making  misrepresentations  either  as  to 
quantity  or  quality.  The  design  of  the  laws  is  not  so  much 
to  protect  the  individual  as  it  is  to  raise  the  whole  tone  of 
German  trade.  It  is  part  of  a  campaign  for  world-conquest ; 
and  for  fear  that  the  laws  are  not  sufficiently  comprehensive 
there  is  a  general  blanket  clause  condemning  any  act  that  is 
contrary  to  gute  Bitten,  or  trade  morality,  and  intended  to 
apply  to  professional  men  as  well  as  to  tradesmen. 

A  few  clauses  from  the  “unfair  competition”  laws  will 
show  their  extreme  severity,  and  laws  in  Germany  are  not 
allowed  to  remain  a  dead  letter.  One  of  them  runs  :  “  who¬ 
ever,  after  announcing  a  clearance  sale,  offers  at  it  goods 
specially  procured  for  the  purpose  is  punishable  with  impris¬ 
onment  up  to  one  year  and  with  a  fine  up  to  5000  marks  or 
with  either  one  of  these  penalties.”  The  same  penalties 
are  to  strike  “  whoever  in  business  intercourse,  from  motives 
of  rivalry,  offers,  promises,  or  hands  gifts  or  advantages  to  an 
employee  or  commissioner  of  a  business  firm,  with  a  view 
through  such  person’s  improper  conduct  to  securing  prefer¬ 
ential  treatment  for  himself  or  another  in  the  purchase  of 
goods  or  the  performance  of  services  in  the  line  of  trade.” 

The  German  government  stands  like  a  protecting  wall 
behind  commerce  and  industry ;  likewise  behind  agriculture. 
Just  as  there  is  a  Bundesrat,  or  Federal  Council,  for  political 
matters,  so  there  is  a  Landwirtschaftsrat,  or  agricultural 
council  to  which  all  the  different  states  send  delegates  and  the 
sessions  of  which  are  often  attended  by  the  emperor.  Each 
individual  state  has,  in  addition,  its  own  agricultural  depart¬ 
ment. 

Governmental  leadership  alone  could  never  have  brought 
either  agriculture  or  industry  to  the  pitch  of  prosperity 
to  which  they  had  attained  just  before  the  outbreak  of  the 


“Unfair 

competi¬ 

tion 

laws.” 


Severity  of 
the  “un¬ 
fair  com¬ 
petition” 
laws. 


The  gov¬ 
ernment 
and  agri¬ 
culture. 


522 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Chambers 
of  agricul¬ 
ture. 


Coopera¬ 

tive 

societies. 


war.  A  second  main  factor  of  success  has  been  what  we 
may  call  internal  organization,  which  does  not,  however, 
mean  that  the  government  has  had  nothing  to  do  with  the 
process.  Even  in  the  case  of  syndicates  and  cooperative 
societies  it  has  had  its  hand  in  the  game.  At  intervals  it 
takes  a  census  both  for  agriculture  and  for  industry.  It 
counts  the  produce  and  the  livestock  down  to  the  individual 
hen,  yes,  where  it  is  a  question  of  proportional  production, 
down  to  three-eighths  of  a  goat !  Its  statistics  are  the  most 
thoroughly  digested  and  the  most  practical  of  those  of  any 
country  in  the  world. 

Apart  from  the  Landwirtschaftsrat  and  the  Landesokono - 
miekollegien,  or  state  agricultural  departments,  there  is  a 
great  “German  Agricultural  Society’ ’  founded  in  1885  on 
the  model  of  the  famous  British  institution  as  a  centre  for 
scientific  investigation  and  practical  experimentation.  In 
addition  there  are  innumerable  local  agricultural  societies. 
Since  1894  regular  “chambers  of  agriculture”  have  been 
established  in  the  great  majority  of  states  —  one  for  each 
province.  The  Prussian  law  provides  that  the  chambers 
shall  look  after  the  agricultural  and  forestry  interests  of 
their  districts,  aid  the  local  administrative  boards  with 
information,  have  experts  draw  up  reports,  further  the 
technical  progress  of  agriculture,  and  investigate  prices  on 
the  produce  exchanges  and  in  the  markets.  The  chambers 
again,  since  1898,  have  a  “Centre  for  the  performance  of 
common  tasks  of  the  chambers  of  agriculture,”  which  now 
forms  one  department  of  the  I^nde^qkonor^ 

Extremely  characteristic  of  German  organization  methods 
is  this  close  knitting  together  of  associations  by  means  of 
centres  or  Zentralstellen.  We  see  it  in  the  labor  bureaus,  of 
which  we  shall  speak  in  the  next  chapter;  we  see  it  in  the 
trades-unions ;  and  we  see  it  in  the  Genossenschciften  or  coop¬ 
erative  societies  that  have  been  developed  to  a  higher  degree 


ECONOMIC  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  523 


in  Germany  than  in  any  other  country.  The  Anglo-Saxon 
thinks  of  the  cooperative  mainly  as  an  institution  that  enables 
the  purchasing  of  goods  more  cheaply  than  in  the  common 
market.  To  the  German  farmer  his  society  is  a  guide, 
philosopher,  and  friend.  It  helps  him  not  only  to  purchase 
all  his  supplies,  the  quality  of  which  it  guarantees,  but  it 
secures  him  credit  at  as  favorable  rates  as  the  greatest  capital¬ 
ist  could  procure;  it  disposes  of  his  products  for  him,  and 
even  undertakes  to  work  his  raw  materials  into  forms  in 
which  they  will  be  more  remunerative.  There  are  no  less 
than  seventeen  forms  of  cooperative  societies,  classed  accord¬ 
ing  to  the  services  which  they  render.  There  were  31,757 
societies  in  1912,  with  5,555,803  members,  and  if  we  reflect 
that  only  one  member  from  a  family  is  apt  to  join,  it  is 
evident  that  about  one-third  of  the  German  population 
benefit  directly  from  the  institution. 

The  cooperative  movement  is  essentially  German.  It 
began  in  1850,  when  the  shoemakers  of  Delitzsch  were 
induced  by  one  Schulze  to  borrow  960  thalers  on  their 
collective  responsibility  and  buy  their  leather  in  a  lump  at 
the  Leipzig  fair.  About  the  same  time  Raiffeisen,  a  burgo¬ 
master  in  the  Westerwald,  began  organizing  societies  of 
farmers  along  much  the  same  lines.  Both  were  active  in  the 
matter  for  years,  Schulze-Delitzsch  dying  in  1883,  Raiffeisen 
in  1888.  Between  1890  and  1911  more  than  fifteen  thousand 
new  societies  were  founded,  while  even  between  1907  and 
1912  the  number  was  increased  by  six  thousand.  The 
law  requires  that  for  purposes  of  supervision  each  society 
shall  belong  to  some  recognized  league,  or  Verband  as  it  is 
called.  Chief  among  these  is  the  “  Imperial  League  of 
German  Agricultural  Societies/’  known  for  short  as  the 
Reichsverband ,  and  to  it  belong  nearly  half  of  all  the  societies. 
Next  in  size  comes  the  “  Central  League  of  German  Con¬ 
sumers’  Associations,”  while  the  Schulze-Delitzsch  and  the 


Progress 
of  the 
coopera¬ 
tive 
move¬ 
ment. 


524 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Central 

coopera¬ 

tive 

societies. 


Raiffeisen  leagues  are  to-day  relatively  unimportant.  The 
leagues  do  much  more  than  supervise ;  they  encourage  the 
organization  of  new  societies  and  help  in  every  way  to  set 
them  on  their  feet.  While  the  vast  majority  of  the  societies 
(26,026  out  of  the  31,715)  are  agricultural,  those  in  the 
towns  have  a  proportionately  larger  membership,  being 
popular  with  the  Social  Democrats.  Between  the  leagues  and 
the  thousands  of  societies  are  120  central  and  main  societies. 
They  are  called  central  societies  when  they  do  merely  a 
credit  and  loan  business,  main  societies  when  they  have  other 
objects  in  view.  Back  of  the  leagues  and  of  the  central 
societies  is  the  most  interesting  institution  of  all  —  the  heart 
of  the  system,  so  to  speak — the  Prussian  Central  Cooperative 
Society  Exchequer,  known  as  the  Preussenkasse.  Founded  in 
1895  and  aided  by  the  Prussian  government  to  the  extent 
of  75,000,000  marks,  a  sum  which  would  be  increased  if 
needed,  it  is  an  inexhaustible  reservoir  of  credit  and  does  a 
business  of  about  a  billion  marks  a  year.  The  rate  of  interest 
charged  is  extremely  low,  only  3|  per  cent,  and  the  loans 
are  made,  not  to  individuals  save  in  rare  cases,  but  to  the 
leagues  and  central  societies,  to  communal  savings  banks, 
and  occasionally  to  large  single  cooperative  societies.  An 
interesting  feature,  a  much  debated  novelty  when  the  bank 
started  in  1895,  is  that  the  bank  loans  not  merely  on  tangible 
securities  but  on  the  general  credit  of  the  societies  and  of  the 
members  who  compose  them,  and  that,  for  the  purpose  of 
estimating  the  amount  of  credit  to  be  allowed,  the  state 
permits  access  even  to  the  secret  data  collected  by  the  tax 


assessors. 

Vereine ,  Distinct  from  the  cooperative  societies  and  almost  equally 
or  associa-  important  are  the  organizations  known  as  V ereine,  or  associa¬ 
tions.  tions  for  the  purpose  of  furthering  the  interests  of  some 
particular  trade  or  branch  of  trade,  or  of  trade  in  some 
particular  region  or  locality.  British  consular  reports  from 


I:  1  '  • 

I 

u 

* 

ECONOMIC  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  525 

|r  ( 

all  parts  of  the  world  are  unanimous  in  asserting  that  these 
Vereine  are  a  highly  important  factor  in  German  success. 
Their  number  is  countless,  their  activities  are  limitless; 
they  set  in  motion  every  bit  of  machinery  that  can  further 
their  ends.  For  instance  the  Stettin  Verein  for  the  develop¬ 
ment  of  oversea  relations  establishes  classes  for  foreign 
languages  and  commercial  geography,  has  a  library  of  works 
on  foreign  commerce,  and  also  a  fund  from  which  the  travel¬ 
ling  expenses  of  those  sent  to  look  over  the  ground  are  paid. 
An  English  writer  calls  this  “  disseminating  spies  throughout 
the  world”;  but  it  is  this  aristocratic  way  of  looking  at 
things  on  the  part  of  England  that  has  cost  her  a  large  part 
of  her  trade.  “  We  receive  by  each  boat,”  writes  the  governor 
of  the  Bahamas,  “  English  wares  absolutely  unsalable, 
quite  unsuited  to  the  climate  and  the  needs  of  the  con¬ 
suming  public.”  “  In  China,”  writes  the  consul  at  Shanghai, 
atea  and  silk  are  the  aristocratic  trades;  our  compatriots 
therefore  deign  to  take  an  interest  in  them.  But  to  touch 
any  of  the  other  articles  would  be  considered  altogether 
infra  dignitatem.  These  other  articles,  therefore,  go  to  our 
competitors.”  The  German  treats  this  matter  of  trade 
psychologically.  He  knows  the  language  and  can  read  the 
mind  of  his  customer.  In  his  Verein  he  has  profited  by  the 
experiences  of  his  predecessors.  He  knows  that  the  cata¬ 
logues  must  be  printed  in  the  language  of  the  country,  that 
his  prices  must  be  given  in  the  local  currency.  “  The  Eng¬ 
lish  manufacturer,”  writes  the  British  consul  at  Hamburg, 
“  always  lives  in  the  belief  that  his  customers  ought  to  take 
what  he  likes,  not  that  he  should  supply  them  with  what 
they  desire.”  In  Stettin,  on  the  other  hand,  the  Verein 
maintains  a  museum  of  dolls  and  models  showing  the  cos¬ 
tumes  of  every  country  so  that  the  tailors  and  clothiers 
can  study  them.  They  make  the  national  or  habitual  dress 
for  all  the  people  under  the  sun,  and  of  exactly  the  color  and 


f 


526 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Trades- 

unions. 


The  “Free 
unions.” 


material  desired.  In  189/  Stettin  exported  no  less  than 
70,000  tons  of  ready-made  clothing ! 

A  Frenchman,  Berard,  has  extolled  the  German  character 
to  the  skies  in  connection  with  the  Vereine:  “The  small 
immediate  profit  of  the  individual  is  almost  always  sub¬ 
ordinate  to  the  more  distant  but  greater  advantage  to  the 
nation.  .  .  .  The  German  Vereine  have  shown  the  maxi¬ 
mum  of  mutual  moderation  and  liberality.” 

That  in  such  a  land  of  collectivism  as  Germany  labor  also 
should  combine  for  mutual  advantage  is  not  surprising. 

Trades-unions  are  organized  somewhat  similarly  to  the 
cooperative  societies.  They  have  a  larger  membership  than 
in  any  other  country,  but,  on  the  whole,  are  less  aggressive 
than  elsewhere.  Between  1910  and  1912  England,  with 
a  much  smaller  population,  had  a  million  more  persons 
on  strike.  The  figures  for  1912,  too,  show  that  a  much 
smaller  proportion  of  strikes  are  successful  in  Germany, 
a  fact  doubtless  due  to  the  better  organization  of  the  em¬ 
ployers  among  themselves.  In  the  United  States  of  America 
73  per  cent  of  the  strikes  were  successful  in  1899,  compared 
to  only  26  per  cent  in  Germany,  a  ratio,  however,  that  has 
been  modified  since  then.  Germany  had  more  than  four 
million  trades-unionists  in  1912,  besides  nearly  800,000  be¬ 
longing  to  confessional  associations  designed  to  further  traae 
interests.  This  is  an  enormous  increase  over  1871,  when 
organized  labor  had  a  following  of  but  6000. 

By  far  the  majority  of  the  German  trades-unionists  belong 
to  the  Freie  Gewerkschaften,  or  free  unions,  which  are  mainly 
social  democratic.  Their  membership  was  2,530,390  in  1912, 
including  216,462  women.  Strange  to  say,  the  unions  repre¬ 
sent  the  moderate  element  in  the  social  democratic  party, 
having  frowned  on  the  general  strike  propaganda  as  well  as 
on  the  repeated  attempts  to  celebrate  the  first  of  May  as  a 
protest  against  the  long  working  hours.  They  have  been 


ECONOMIC  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  527 


accused  by  the  more  radical  socialists  of  holding  a  “petty 
tradesman’s  point  of  view”  and  there  have  been  violent 
scenes  at  party  gatherings.  In  1906  the  scale  was  all  but 
turned  the  other  way. 

There  are  “  Hirsch-Duncker  ”  unions,  which  are  too  mild 
to  be  popular;  also  “Christian  unions”  that  have  been 
attacked  with  success  by  the  church,  which  “suffered” 
Catholics  to  belong  to  them  for  a  while,  but  only  “  so  long  as 
on  account  of  unforeseen  circumstances  this  suffrance  does 
not  cease  to  be  advisable  or  permissible.”  The  Pope  has 
latterly  made  good  his  claim  to  have  the  bishops  supervise 
the  Christian  unions,  although  they  have  many  protestant 
members,  and  this  on  the  ground  that  “  whatever  a  Christian 
does,  even  in  managing  earthly  affairs  he  must  not  disregard 
supernatural  benefits.  .  .  .  All  his  actions,  in  respect  to 
their  agreement  with  natural  and  divine  law  are  subject 
to  the  judgment  and  sentence  of  the  church.”  The  latest 
unions  are  the  Wirtschaftsfriedliche ,  commonly  known  as  the 
“yellows,”  which  consider  that  they  have  the  same  interests 
as  their  employers,  and  do  not  even  maintain  a  strike  fund. 
They  have  a  membership  of  approximately  250,000,  which 
is  doing  well  for  an  organization  not  founded  until  1906. 

One  of  the  strong  tendencies  in  the  industrial  world  has 
been  that  towards  greater  and  greater  concentration.  The 
homely  little  article  known  as  the  “  Kohinoor,”  a  press  button 
used  on  women’s  skirts,  is  practically  a  monopoly  of  one  firm 
with  branches  in  Dresden,  Prague,  and  Wrschowitz,  and 
agencies  in  Vienna,  London,  Paris,  New  York,  and  Montreal. 
To  go  to  the  other  extreme  of  the  scale,  almost  the  whole  steel 
production  is  in  the  hands  of  the  Stahl werksverband,  a  league 
of  thirty-one  firms  entered  into  for  the  purpose  of  regulating 
supply  and  demand.  The  Rhenish-Westphalian  Coal  Syndi¬ 
cate  controls  54  per  cent  of  the  whole  German  output,  and  all 
but  2  or  3  per  cent  of  the  production  of  the  richest  mines, 


Other 

“unions.” 


Tendency 

toward 

concen¬ 

tration. 


528 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


“Con¬ 

cerns.” 


Science 

and 

progress. 


Schulz- 

Lupitz. 


Rimpau- 

Kunau. 


those  of  the  Ruhr  district.  The  mines  deliver  to  the  syndi¬ 
cate  and  the  syndicate  does  the  selling.  The  same  process 
is  going  on  in  the  banking  world,  the  four  D.  banks  (Deutsche, 
Dresdener,  Darmstadter,  and  Diskonto)  having  absorbed 
hundreds  of  smaller  institutions.  A  concentration  process 
of  a  different  kind  and  one  that  helps  to  neutralize  the  other 
is  going  on  simultaneously.  In  order  not  to  have  to  pay  the 
coal  syndicate’s  prices  the  Krupp  iron  works  at  Essen  have 
acquired  their  own  coal  mines.  This  company,  which  already 
in  1912  employed  nearly  70,000  persons,  also  owns  its  own 
wharves  and  its  own  line  of  steamers.  , 

Akin  to  syndicates  and  also  to  the  form  of  organization  just 
described  are  the  so-called  “  concerns.”  The  great  Siemens 
electric  “  concern,  ”  that  deals  in  almost  everything  into  which 
electricity  enters,  disposes  of  a  capital  of  hundreds  of  millions 
of  marks  and  has  169  agencies  in  different  parts  of  the  world. 
Another  “  concern,”  the  “Allgemeine  Elektrizitat-Gesell- 
schaft,”  is  organized  on  an  equally  grand  scale,  while  single 
companies  with  high  tension  lines  count  whole  cities  among 
their  customers. 

We  have  spoken  of  government  leadership  and  of  organiza¬ 
tion  as  factors  in  Germany’s  economic  progress.  We  must 
not  forget  the  credit  due  to  her  scientists.  But  for  their  long, 
patient  devotion  to  the  cause,  their  years  of  theorizing  before 
the  practical  applications  could  be  made,  their  constant 
watchfulness  in  keeping  abreast  of  the  needs,  the  country 
would  never  have  attained  such  a  lead  in  the  race.  This 
applies  to  agriculture  as  well  as  to  industry. 

The  discovery  made  by  Schulz-Lupitz  that  clovers  and 
similar  plants  grown  on  the  ground  and  ploughed  into  it 
would  be  as  beneficial  to  the  soil  as  some  of  the  expensive 
fertilizers  has  revolutionized  the  farming  of  poor  lands. 
Rimpau-Kunau,  on  the  other  hand,  found  that  the  excess  of 
nitrogen  in  swampy  soils  could  be  neutralized  with  the  help 


ECONOMIC  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  529 

of  potash,  which,  in  Germany,  is  obtainable  in  quantities 
that  are  inexhaustible.  At  the  same  time  von  Lochow, 
Beseler,  Heine,  Paulsen  and  others  have,  by  cross-breeding 
and  by  cross-fertilization,  greatly  improved  the  strains  of 
cattle  and  the  varieties  of  plants.  Not  only,  for  instance, 
has  the  yield  of  sugar  beets  to  the  acre  been  improved,  but  as 
much  sugar  can  now  be  extracted  from  three  beets  as  formerly 
from  four.  Another  notable  achievement  that  has  proved  of 
inestimable  value  is  the  discovery  of  a  process  for  drying 
potatoes  and  reducing  them  to  a  meal  which  can  be  used  like 
flour.  It  is  reckoned  that  formerly  one-tenth  of  the  crop  went 
to  waste  through  rotting  or  freezing ;  this  loss  can  be  almost 
entirely  eliminated  by  the  new  discovery,  and  there  are  now 
a  number  of  cooperative  potato-drying  plants.  A  way  has 
been  found,  too,  of  so  drying  the  leaves  both  of  beets  and  of 
potatoes  that  they  can  be  fed  to  cattle  like  hay.  Since  the 
outbreak  of  the  war  scientists  have  discovered  many  sub¬ 
stitutes  for  the  kinds  of  food  that  have  grown  scarce,  but  this 
knowledge  is  kept  secret  in  great  part. 

The  share  of  science  in  the  growth  of  industry  is  incal¬ 
culable.  The  fact,  for  instance,  that  to-day  Germany’s 
steel  and  iron  output  nearly  doubles  that  of  England  is  largely 
due  to  new  processes  of  smelting,  the  English  having  clung 
to  the  plain  Bessemer  method.  Siemens  and  Martini 
evolved  a  process  by  which  each  smelting  oven  becomes 
a  sort  of  Bunsen  burner,  giving  out  the  hottest  kind  of 
flame.  The  air  is  first  heated  in  tall  towers  and  then  blown 
by  means  of  huge  bellows  into  the  ovens.  The  great 
chimney-like  structures  that  one  sees  when  passing  through 
the  German  iron  district  are  often  not  chimneys  at  all  but 
hot-air  towers.  In  the  ovens,  as  is  well  known,  a  gas  is 
generated,  known  as  carbon  dioxide,  which  is  essential  to 
the  process  of  smelting.  It  remained  for  German  thrift  and 
for  German  science  to  find  that  in  the  new  type  of  ovens 
VOL.  ii —  2  m 


Von 

Lochow, 

Beseler, 

etc. 


Science 

and 

industry. 


Utilizing 
oven  gas. 


530 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


New 

inventions 
in  coal¬ 
mining. 


Coal-tar 

products. 


much  more  gas  is  generated  than  is  actually  required  in  the 
smelting  and  to  invent  an  engine  that  can  transmute  this 
fuel  into  electric  power.  The  first  gas  engine  of  the  kind  was 
put  in  use  in  1895,  and  the  Augsburg-Nuremburg  Machine 
Factory,  which  holds  the  patent,  has  since  turned  them  out 
in  considerable  numbers.  Individual  iron-works  obtain 
sufficient  power  in  this  way  to  run  all  their  rolling  mills  and 
other  machinery,  while  often  there  still  remains  a  sufficient 
surplus  of  current  to  light  small  towns  and  villages.  By 
various  inventions  the  ovens  themselves  have  been  so  im¬ 
proved  that  one  of  them  can  now  turn  out  from  65  to  70,000 
tons  a  year  when  formerly  the  capacity  was  only  19,000. 

In  coal-mining,  new  inventions  and  appliances  have 
achieved  results  almost  as  important.  Quicksands,  formerly 
a  serious  interruption  when  sinking  shafts,  can  now  be 
frozen  stiff  and  kept  in  that  condition  until  the  force  is 
prepared  to  cope  with  them.  Shafts  can  be  sunk,  too,  with¬ 
out  the  usual  costly  lining  by  driving  a  circle  of  deep  artesian 
wells  and  pouring  in  concrete.  The  concrete  spreads  among 
the  rifts  in  the  rock  and,  as  it  hardens,  prevents  the  danger 
of  caving  in.  Science,  too,  has  devised  methods  by  vffiich 
millions  of  tons  of  coal  which  formerly  could  not  be  extracted 
because  of  danger  from  falling  slate  can  now  be  mined. 
Great  quantities  of  rubble  from  the  surface  are  pumped 
into  the  cavities,  and  the  great  pillars  of  coal  that  were 
formerly  left  as  supports  can  now  be  utilized. 

But  it  is  in  the  utilization  of  by-products  that  German 
science  has  achieved  its  most  remarkable  results.  One  has 
only  to  think  of  the  many  valuable  substances  that  have 
been  extracted  from  coal  tar,  of  the  great  dye  industry  that 
had  put  the  whole  world  into  vassalage.  To  the  very 
Orient,  which  once  supplied  the  markets  with  indigo,  Ger¬ 
many  has  been  exporting  an  artificial  product  that  has  al¬ 
most  put  an  end  to  the  growing  of  the  natural  plant. 


ECONOMIC  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  531 


The  daily  production  of  artificial  indigo  was  reckoned  before 
the  war  at  no  less  than  twenty  tons.  Some  of  the  most 
valued  drugs  in  medicine,  too,  are  derived  from  coal  tar: 
aspirin,  antipyrine,  phenacetine,  sulfonal,  trional,  veronal. 
Salvarsan,  too,  a  specific  for  a  horrible  and  hitherto  almost 
incurable  disease,  is  a  product  of  German  science. 

To  what  extent  chemical  science  has  become  transmuted 
into  practical  benefits  can  be  gathered  from  the  fact  that, 
in  1894,  employees  in  chemical  factories  drew  salaries  totalling 
99  million  marks,  whereas  in  1912  the  sum  was  325  million ! 
The  chemical  exports  in  the  latter  year  rose  to  the  great 
total  of  825  million  marks,  though  the  necessary  imports  of 
raw  materials  greatly  reduce  the  clear  gain  to  the  country. 

The  hope  of  the  future  is  placed  not  in  fluctuating  markets 
but  in  still  further  improvement  of  the  products.  The 
great  chemical  plants  have  splendidly  equipped  laboratories 
and  libraries  and  employ  hundreds  of  scientists  (the  Baden 
Aniline  and  Soda  works  alone  some  two  hundred  and  fifty) 
whose  chief  work  is  to  keep  abreast  of  discoveries  or  to  make 
inventions  of  their  own.  Some  20,000  patents  already  attest 
their  achievements. 


If  the  battle  of  Waterloo  was  won  on  the  playgrounds  of 
Eton,  Germany’s  industrial  battles  have  been  won  in  her  in¬ 
stitutes  of  technology,  her  trade  schools  and  her  industrial 
continuation  schools.  The  rise  and  development  of  these 
scientific  and  technical  institutions  are  a  distinguishing  mark 
of  German  civilization  during  the  period  since  1871. 

To  begin  with  the  Technische  Hochschulen,  or,  as  we  should 
call  them,  the  polytechnic  schools  and  institutes  of  technology. 
Previously  to  1870  they  were  of  small  importance  and  not 
until  1900  when,  largely  through  the  present  Emperor’s 
initiative,  it  became  possible  to  obtain  the  degree  of  “  Doctor 


Exports  of 
chemicals. 


Industrial 

training. 


Institutes 
of  tech¬ 
nology. 


532 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Curricu¬ 
lum  of  the 
Hoch - 
schulen. 


of  Engineering”  (Dr.  Ing.)  were  they  considered  as  in  any 
way  on  a  plane  with  the  universities.  Even  then,  Prussia’s 
universities,  like  dames  jealous  of  their  social  position, 
obtained  the  reservation  that  the  doctor  diploma  of  the  scien¬ 
tific  schools  must  be  written  in  German  as  opposed  to  Latin. 
About  an  average  of  one  hundred  students  a  year  have 
taken  their  doctor’s  degree  in  the  new  institutions  since  the 

old  restrictions  were  removed. 

There  are  now  eleven  Technische  Hochsclmlen,  one  each  in 
Berlin,  Munich,  Aix-la-Chapelle,  Brunswick,  Darmstadt, 
Dresden,  Hanover,  Carlsruhe,  Stuttgart,  Danzic  and  Breslau. 
They  are  all  organized  on  the  same  general  principle,  with 
academic  freedom,  power  to  choose  their  own  rectors  or 
heads,  and  with  recognition  by  the  state  of  their  diplomas  for 
those  entering  its  service.  The  state  railways  especially 
offer  a  broad  field  for  scientifically  trained  men,  but  so  do 
a  number  of  other  state  and  city-run  enterprises.  JFor  these, 
then,  the  Hochschulen  are  regular  recruiting  grounds,  —  one 
more  example  of  how  in  Germany  all  elements  are  made  to 
serve  each  other  and  conduce  to  the  same  end. 

The  model  on  which  the  Hochschulen  were  based  was  the 
French  ecole  polytechnique  and,  as  is  the  case  in  that  insti¬ 
tution,  the  interests  of  higher  science  are  always  kept  in  the 
foreground.  To  be  sure  there  have  been  conflicts  between 
those  favoring  this  direction  and  those  who  wish  more  practi¬ 
cal  training ;  and  concessions  to  both  sides  have  so  increased 
the  requirements  that  the  German  scientific  student  is  apt  to 
enter  very  late  upon  his  life  work.  The  demands  of  the 
government  service,  too,  have  tended  to  crowd  the  curriculum. 
Officials  were  needed  who  were  not  only  experts  but  who  also 
knew  something  of  economic  and  legal  questions,  and  some  of 
the  schools  have  introduced  courses  on  those  subjects.  The 
new  practical  uses  of  electricity,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
changes  in  motors  and  machinery  caused  by  the  advances  in 


ECONOMIC  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  533 

ship-building  and  in  aeroplane  construction,  the  wide  appli¬ 
cation  of  chemistry  to  industry  have  necessitated  such  ad¬ 
ditions  to  the  plants  of  the  Hochschulen  that  they  bear  little 
resemblance  to  the  old  type  of  school  with  its  one  physical 
and  its  one  chemical  laboratory. 

The  merchant  class  has  its  own  special  commercial  insti-  Commer- 
tutes,  the  Handelshochschulen,  which  are  supported  by  the  ciai  in_ 
city  governments  or  by  the  chambers  of  commerce.  The  stitutes* 
first  school  of  this  new  type  was  opened  at  Leipzig  in  1898. 

There  is  now  one  at  Aix-la-Chapelle,  one  at  Cologne,  one  at 
Frankfort,  one  at  Berlin,  one  at  Mannheim,  one  at  Munich, 
and  one  at  Konigsberg.  They  are  institutions  for  scientific 
investigation  in  the  field  of  production  and  consumption  in 
the  markets  of  the  world.  They  are  of  university  grade, 
with  academic  freedom,  and  in  Berlin,  in  June,  1914,  there 
was  a  student  strike  because  the  removal  of  a  professor 
was  effected  by  the  commercial  body  that  financed  the  school, 
in  a  way  that  was  considered  arbitrary.  But  on  the  whole 
there  is  not  the  same  uniformity  of  organization  or  of  goal 
as  in  the  technological  institutes.  The  period  of  study 
covers  four  semesters  or  terms  —  five  for  those  who  wish  to 
take  a  diploma  as  “teachers  of  commerce. ”  The  curricula, 
too,  show  general  uniformity  and  include  political  economy, 
commercial  law,  history  and  theory  of  commerce,  geography, 
the  study  of  materials,  physics,  chemistry  and  languages. 

One  great  achievement  of  the  Handelshochschulen  is  the 
raising  of  the  social  level  of  the  merchant  class,  inasmuch  as 
the  demands  on  the  intelligence,  in  the  upper  circles  at  least, 
are  now  as  strenuous  as  in  many  of  the  higher  professions. 

More  and  more  men  so  trained  will  be  called,  too,  to  take 
leading  places  in  the  service  of  the  state. 

Trade  schools  are  now  to  be  found  in  great  numbers  all  Trade 
over  Germany  and  often  they  are  housed  in  splendid  build-  schools, 
ings.  They  are  financed  either  by  the  state,  the  com- 


534 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Schools 
for  metal 
workers. 


Other 

trade 

schools. 


munity  or  by  industrial  or  commercial  corporations,  such  as 
boards  of  trade.  They  are  called  Fachschulen,  the  word 
Fach  in  this  case  meaning  occupation  or  calling.  Different 
branches  of  industry  like  building,  machine-making,  metal 
work,  and  weaving  have  their  own  schools.  There  are  also 
a  great  number  of  industrial  art  schools  for  decorators, 
furniture  designers,  jewellers,  engravers,  lithographers,  and 
the  like.  These  schools  have  their  regular  students  through 
the  day  and  often,  in  addition,  give  Sunday  and  evening 
classes  for  the  benefit  of  those  who  already  have  to  work  for 
their  living.  These  schools  have  broken  away  from  old 
traditions  and,  since  early  in  the  nineties,  encourage  origi¬ 
nality  of  design  instead  of  slavishly  following  old  models. 
The  work  has  become  more  and  more  practical  and  has  so 
increased  in  popularity  that  in  the  winter  of  1912-13  in  the 
Prussian  schools  alone  there  were  3525  day  scholars  and 
11,738  evening  scholars.  The  other  states,  following  the 
example  of  Prussia,  have  taken  over  the  direction  of  the 
schools  for  the  building  trade.  Since  1899  there  is  a  normal 
curriculum  for  these  building-traoe  schools  for  the  whole 
empire  and,  since  1908,  this  curriculum  has  been  broadened 
so  as  to  cover  five  semesters.  There  are  always  two  divi¬ 
sions,  one  for  above-ground  work  or  Hochbau  and  the  other 
for  below-ground  or  Tiefbau.  All  the  students  work  together 
for  the  first  three  terms,  after  which  the  nature  of  the  tasks 
becomes  different. 

Similar  to  the  organization  of  the  building-trades  schools 
is  that  of  the  schools  for  metal  workers,  also  in  the  hands  of 
the  states  and  with  a  unified  and  common  curriculum 
drawn  up  in  1910.  Included  in  the  category  are  schools  for 
machine-makers  and  schools,  in  Kiel  and  in  Hamburg,  for 
ship-building  and  ship  machinery.  The  states  also  con¬ 
tribute  to  the  support  of  schools  for  textile  industries,  but 
have  not  sought  to  control  them.  There  is  in  Germany  no 


ECONOMIC  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  535 


trade  that  has  to  be  learned  by  haphazard  methods.  As  a 
help  to  the  dwellers  on  the  North  Sea  and  on  the  Baltic  the 
Prussian  state  has  even  organized  navigation  schools  and 
special  schools  for  the  machinists  of  steamers.  Both  Prussia 
and  Saxony  have  schools  for  training  workers  in  mines. 
There  are  schools,  too,  for  training  women  for  special  occu¬ 
pations  like  glove  making,  lace  making,  and  embroidery. 
The  schools  for  housekeeping  are  especially  numerous. 
There  are  four  institutions  run  by  the  Prussian  state  which 
give  courses  extending  over  the  whole  year  and  including 
cooking,  baking,  preserving,  washing  and  ironing,  the  use 
of  the  sewing-machine,  hygiene  and  the  care  of  children  and 
of  sick  people.  The  course  can  be  extended  to  include 
millinery,  fancy  work,  drawing,  and  painting.  Such  courses 
are  attended  not  so  much  by  amateurs  as  by  persons  intend¬ 
ing  to  earn  their  livelihood. 

But  Germany’s  distinct  contribution  to  the  cause  of  in¬ 
dustrial  training,  the  greatest  educational  contribution  to 
the  present  generation,  is  the  Fortbildungschuie,  or  continua¬ 
tion  school.  Here  96  per  cent  of  the  youth  of  Germany  are 
cared  for.  In  Prussia  alone,  in  1912,  there  were  2637  of  these 
schools  with  a  total  of  455,478  scholars.  The  schools  are 
not  all  of  one  type  —  some  are  compulsory,  a  few  are  volun¬ 
tary.  Some  require  a  few  hours  out  of  the  week,  others 
require  many.  Some  have  evening  classes.  The  general 
aim  is  to  get  hold  of  the  children  after  they  have  left  the 
elementary  school  and  train  them  as  men  and  women,  as 
citizens  and  as  workers.  In  one  locality  more  stress  is  laid 
on  the  one  function  of  the  school  than  on  the  other,  but  the 
government,  through  ministerial  decrees,  tries  to  achieve 
as  much  uniformity  as  possible.  Gradually,  too,  a  class  of 
teachers  is  growing  up,  all  trained  in  the  same  traditions. 
In  September,  1912,  the  Prussian  ministry  of  commerce 
and  industry  opened  a  seminar  course  for  continuation  school- 


The  con¬ 
tinuation 
schools. 


536 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Features 
of  the 
continua¬ 
tion 
schools. 


The  im¬ 
portance 
attached 
to 

drawing. 


teachers  in  the  industrial  art  school  of  Charlottenburg, 
when  no  less  than  299  candidates,  four-fifths  of  them  arti¬ 
sans,  presented  themselves  for  the  entrance  examination. 
As  only  ninety  teachers  were  likely  to  be  needed,  the  rest 
were  at  once  disposed  of  by  severe  processes  of  elimination. 

Common  to  all  the  schools  are  two  features  i  the  making 
of  the  pupil’s  calling  or  occupation  the  pivot  of  all  instruc¬ 
tion,  and  the  importance  attached  to  mechanical  and  ar¬ 
tistic  drawing. 

In  the  large  cities  there  are  separate  classes  for  every  trade 
and  there  is  an  entirely  separate  curriculum  for  each  class. 
The  reading,  the  mathematics,  the  correspondence,  all  have 
to  do  with  the  pupil’s  immediate  needs.  He  learns  about 
his  materials,  his  tools,  about  new  methods  of  manufacture 
and  accounting.  He  learns  many  a  secret  regarding  the  treat¬ 
ment  of  customers  that  may  one  day  make  the  difference 
between  failure  or  success.  In  fact  his  horizon  is  broadened 
in  every  direction,  he  is  taught  to  be  business-like  and  fair 
in  all  his  dealings,  and  is  warned  at  every  turn  of  the  special 
dangers  that  lurk  in  his  path.  Young  barbers,  for  instance, 
who  may  one  day  hope  to  start  their  own  shops,  are  taught 
to  weigh  the  advantages  and  disadvantages  of  different  locali¬ 
ties  and  to  note  all  the  special  points  that  must  be  regarded 
in  signing  a  lease  or  effecting  a  purchase ;  also  the  intricacies 

of  loans,  mortgages,  and  interest. 

Drawing  is  considered  the  one  subject  of  vital  importance  in 
all  continuation  schools.  “  It  is  the  speech  of  the  workshop,” 
writes  an  authority  ;  “  he  who  does  not  understand  it  is  useless 
as  a  journeyman  and  still  more  useless  as  a  master.  Daily 
the  artisan  experiences  this  and  has  experienced  it  for  a 
century.”  It  is  not  the  mere  elements  of  drawing,  however, 
that  are  taught,  for  these  have  already  been  taught  in  the 
primary  school.  It  is  exclusively  drawing  as  applied  to  the 
actual  needs  of  the  trade.  “The  instruction  in  drawing,” 


ECONOMIC  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  537 

says  a  ministerial  decree  of  1907,  “shall  bring  the  pupil  to  a 
point  where  he  can  thoroughly  understand  working  plans 
and  if  possible  draw  plans  himself  for  the  ordinary  tasks  of 
his  calling.”  If  you  go  into  the  class  rooms  of  the  contin¬ 
uation  schools  you  will  find  the  little  shoemakers  draw¬ 
ing  soles  and  uppers,  the  saddlers  drawing  straps  and 
buckles,  the  plumbers  drawing  pipe  joints  or  even  plans  for 
water  systems,  the  carpenters  drawing  cornices,  roofs, 
windows  and  the  like,  the  barbers  drawing  heads  and  frisures, 
and  even  the  chimney  sweeps  drawing  chimneys.  Painters, 
decorators,  engravers,  goldsmiths,  lithographers,  and  even 
confectioners  go  quite  deeply  into  artistic  designing. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  the  majority  of  continuation  Appren- 
school  pupils  are  apprentices  and  that  apprenticeship  plays  ticeship. 
a  very  different  role  in  Germany  from  what  it  does  in  our  own 
land  of  factories.  In  Germany  some  800,000  youths  are 
working,  practically  without  pay,  for  masters  who  are  bound 
by  contract  to  give  them  an  all-round  training  in  their 
trade.  At  the  end  of  the  period  the  boy  passes  an  examina¬ 
tion  before  regularly  constituted  examiners  and  qualifies  as 
a  “journeyman.”  The  whole  matter  is  regulated  by  the 
Gewerbeordnung  or  imperial  industrial  ordinance  and,  since 
1897,  there  are  “chambers  of  industry,”  one  main  object  of 
which  is  to  look  after  the  welfare  of  apprentices.  These 
“chambers,”  of  which  there  were  sixty-three  in  1900,  insist 
that  the  contract  with  the  masters  be  drawn  up  in  due  form, 
determine  the  qualifications  of  a  master,  the  number  of  ap¬ 
prentices  he  may  keep,  and  the  length  of  time  he  may  keep 
them,  make  uniform  requirements  for  technical  training,  and 
see  that  the  examinations  are  properly  conducted.  The 
“chambers”  keep  a  register  of  all  the  masters  and  all  the 
apprentices  and  provide  inspectors  who  appeal  to  the  police 
if  the  regulations  are  not  properly  observed-.  The  “cham¬ 
bers”  go  so  far  as  to  advise  boys  personally  about  the  con- 


538 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Methods 
of  the 
continua¬ 
tion 
schools. 


tracts  they  are  about  to  sign.  Altogether  the  dignity  of 
apprenticeship  has  been  so  upheld  that  the  average  appren¬ 
tice,  though  he  be  earning  much  less  than  the  mere  factory 
hand,  feels  himself  higher  in  the  social  scale  than  the  un¬ 
taught,  and  there  is  the  greatest  pride  in  the  Gesellemtuck , 
or  finished  piece  of  work  that  is  always  required  for  the 
examination.  These  Geselleustuchc  are  usually  placed  on 
exhibition  and  prizes  are  awarded  for  the  best  piece  of  work. 
The  German  public  takes  the  greatest  interest  in  such 
matters,  as  will  be  seen  from  the  fact  that  an  exhibition  of 
Gesellenstuche  in  Freiburg  in  1908  was  attended  by  11,000 
persons.  Yet  the  Gesellenstuck  may  be  of  the  most  prosaic 
nature,  —  for  an  upholsterer,  for  instance,  the  stuffing  of 
a  chair  or  of  a  lounge  or  of  a  spring  mattress. 

The  continuation  schools  differ  greatly  in  the  amount  of 
actual  technical  work  they  require  in  connection  with  the 
studies.  The  Frankfort  schools,  indeed,  have  laid  down  the 
principle  that  practically  all  work  of  this  kind  should  be 
done  by  the  apprentice  in  his  master’s  workshop,  believing 
it  possible  to  bring  about  in  this  way  a  much-to-be  desired 
cooperation  between  the  masters  and  the  schools.  Diissel- 
dorf  goes  on  a  different  principle.  The  schools  try  not  to 
duplicate,  but  to  supplement,  the  workshops.  The  young 
tailors,  for  instance,  are  given  bits  of  finer  material  than 
they  would  be  apt  to  be  intrusted  with  by  their  masters  and 
are  practised  in  the  more  difficult  processes  of  their  trade, 
such  as  buttonhole  and  lapel  making.  Incidentally,  m 
all  the  classes  the  difference  between  good  and  bad  materials 
is  insisted  upon,  and  it  is  shown  that  a  reputation  for  integrity 
will  outweigh  any  slight  momentary  increase  of  profits. 
The  pupils  are  taught  very  carefully  to  compute  the  cost 
of  each  item,  including  every  minute  of  their  own  labor,  and 
then  to  add  only  a  reasonable  and  normal  profit.  Such 
ideas,  thus  spread  throughout  the  empire,  have  very  quickly 


ECONOMIC  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  539 


raised  the  whole  level  of  industry  and  paved  the  way  for 
world  conquest. 

It  is  in  Munich  that  the  combination  of  continuation 
school  and  school  workshops  is  seen  in  its  full  glory.  The 
expenditure  for  industrial  training  purposes  has  been  so 
lavish  that  the  cost  per  head  is  about  double  that  of  other 
cities.  In  all  about  21,000  persons  are  yearly  being  trained 
in  the  city’s  schools,  if  we  include  the  trade  schools  and  all  the 
special  classes,  some  of  which  are  designed  even  for  masters. 
Seven  thousand  girls  are  trained  in  housekeeping.  At  the 
continuation  schools  attendance  is  compulsory  for  a  number 
of  hours  equalling  one  whole  working  day  out  of  the  six 
and  for  a  period  of  three  years.  The  masters  and  journey¬ 
men  are  in  full  sympathy  with  the  whole  movement  and 
helped,  in  1907,  to  draw  up  the  curriculum  as  it  now  stands. 
How  thoroughly  the  matter  was  thought  out  may  be  judged 
from  the  fact  that  no  less  than  92  conferences  were  held,  of 
which  46  were  in  conjunction  with  masters  and  journeymen. 
Indeed  a  standing  committee  of  employers  aids  in  supervising 
the  practical  instruction.  Its  members  attend  the  examina¬ 
tions  and,  in  general,  serve  as  a  connecting  link  between  the 
trades  and  their  new  recruits.  The  city  government  itself  is, 
of  course,  deeply  interested.  It  gives  the  use  of  the  city 
slaughter-house  and  cattle  yard  for  the  instruction  of  the 
butchers  and  has  also  set  apart  a  special  tract  of  land  for 
the  use  of  the  gardeners.  The  city  of  Diisseldorf  goes  even 
further  in  this  regard.  There  is  a  continuation  school 
class  for  the  training  of  delivery  wagon  drivers;  and  the 
city,  in  connection  with  a  teamsters’  association,  provides  a 
driving  park  as  well  as  the  carts  and  horses. 

The  practical  work  in  the  Munich  continuation  schools 
is  highly  amusing  and  interesting  to  watch.  The  barbers, 
for  instance,  sit  like  little  Robespierres  with  rows  of  wax 
heads  before  them  on  a  table,  cutting  and  parting,  brushing 


The 

Munich 

continua¬ 

tion 

schools. 


Practical 
work  in 
the 

Munich 

schools. 


Butcher 

boys. 


540  A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

■A'- 

and  curling,  crimping  and  burning ;  now  making  and  fitting 
a  wig,  now  trimming  the  whiskers  and  beard.  They  are 
made  to  practise  handling  capes  and  towels,  sharpening 
razors  and  soaping  with  the  brush  and  with  the  hand.  They 
must  know  how  to  apply  the  moustache  guard  that  is  a 
specialty  with  German  officers.  They  are  taught  to  meet  and 
greet  their  customer,  how  to  take  his  hat  and  cane.  In 
the  same  way,  young  innkeepers  and  waiters  are  placed 
before  an  actual  table  and  made  to  cover  it  with  the  cloth; 
to  place  the  napkins,  plates,  glasses,  and  cutlery ;  to  pour  the 
wine  and  water ;  to  hand  the  dishes ;  and  to  carve.  They 
must  know  how  to  arrange  for  dinner  and  supper  parties, 
how  to  draw  up  a  menu,  how  to  keep  and  serve  wines  at 
the  temperature  suitable  to  each.  They  are  instructed  in 
cleanly  habits,  in  the  tone  of  voice  they  are  to  employ,  yes 
in  the  very  words  they  are  to  use  when  accepting  trinkgeld. 
These  are  trivial  details,  but  they  show  the  new  note  of  realism 
that  has  gone  through  German  education  and  helped  the 
nation  to  forge  ahead.  Just  so  in  army  practice  the  soldiers 
have  been  trained  to  rush  at  real  obstacles  almost  as  formi¬ 
dable  as  any  they  will  be  called  upon  to  encounter  in  the 

field. 

There  is  an  increased  dignity  attached  to  every  calling 
taught  in  this  way.  The  butcher  boys  in  the  cattle  yards 
learn  to  judge  the  good  points  of  a  beast  and  to  appreciate 
the  effect  upon  the  quality  of  meat  of  the  different  kinds  of 
feeding.  They  can  detect  the  signs  of  disease.  Just  so 
the  coachman  is  made  to  study  the  geography  of  his  town 
and  find  the  quickest  way  from  point  to  point;  he  learns 
the  sights  and  monuments  and  everything  connected  with 
them  so  as  to  be  able,  if  need  be,  to  entertain  his  fare.  Better 
still,  he  learns  the  anatomy  of  the  horse  from  actual  stuffed 
animals,  and  is  taught  how  to  give  his  animal  the  best  care. 
Gardeners  learn  botany  and  designing. 


ECONOMIC  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  541y 

S’  tr*  " 

33 

Not  even  the  chimney-sweep  is  neglected  in  Munich.  Chimney- 
The  chimney  is  his  sphere,  and  he  must  learn  all  that  can  sweePs- 
possibly  be  known  about  it :  the  mathematical  relations  of 
height  and  draft,  the  correct  dimensions  for  proper  function¬ 
ing,  the  chemical  properties  of  soot,  the  different  reasons  for 
the  formation  of  gases.  But  even  there  the  young  man’s 
responsibilities  do  not  end.  He  must  have  at  his  fingers  ’  tips 
all  the  insurance  laws  that  concern  his  trade. 

Surely  here  is  a  system  of  education  that  helps  to  sharpen 
every  weapon  that  can  be  used  in  the  great  economic  struggle. 

These  standards  of  thoroughness  have  permeated  the  whole 
German  race. 

The  industrial  schools  stand  in  close  relation  with  the  public 
labor  bureaus,  many  of  which  have  special  departments  for 
would-be  apprentices.  But  these  bureaus  have  a  social 
betterment  side  that  is  even  more  important  than  their 
economic  side. 


Conclu¬ 

sions. 


CHAPTER  XIII 


Design  of 
the 

chapter. 


Illegiti¬ 

mate 

children. 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914 

Literature  :  Deutschland  unter  Kaiser  Wilhelm  II.  Handbuch 
der  Politik.  Martin  Wenck,  Die  Geschichte  und  Ziele  der  deutschen 
Sozialpolitik,  is  good  as  far  as  it  goes.  The  lectures  of  the  Cologne 
Hochschule  fur  Kommunale  und  soziale  V erwaltung  are  on  a  very 
high  level.  Two  volumes  have  as  yet  appeared :  Die  soziale  Fiir- 
sorge  der  kommunalen  V erwaltung  in  Stadt  und  Land ,  and  Die  neuen 
Aufgaben  der  Sozialversicherung  in  der  Praxis ,  both  published  in 
1913.  Kleeman,  Die  Sozialpolitik  der  Reichs-Post  und  Telegraph - 
enverwaltung,  shows  what  the  post  office  does  for  its  employees. 
Thissen-Trimborn,  Soziale  Tatigkeit  der  Stadtgemeinden,  treats  of 
all  varieties  of  topics  and  is  excellent.  The  city  reports  give  the 
different  social  betterment  activities  in  detail.  But  the  litera¬ 
ture  of  this,  as  well  as  of  the  preceding  topic,  is  inexhaustible. 

It  has  been  said  of  the  Roman  Catholic  church  that,  with 
its  sacraments  and  its  required  duties,  it  watches  over  men 
from  the  cradle  to  the  grave.  The  same  is  true  of  the  Ger¬ 
man  Empire.  The  design  of  this  chapter  is  to  follow  human 
life  and  see  what  is  done,  according  to  modern  German 
methods,  to  make  it  more  safe  and  pleasant.  Social  science 
is  almost  wholly  a  product  of  the  present  generation,  and 
while  Germany  has  not  always  been  a  pioneer,  it  is  safe  to 
say  that  nowhere  have  the  new  ideas  been  more  systemati¬ 
cally  carried  out. 

The  registering  of  births  is  most  thorough,  and  the  penal¬ 
ties  for  want  of  promptness  are  most  severe.  It  must  al¬ 
ways  be  stated  whether  the  child  is  legitimate  or  illegiti¬ 
mate,  in  which  latter  case  it  is  put  in  the  care  of  a  professional 
guardian,  one  of  whose  chief  concerns  is  to  see  that  the  father 
contributes  to  its  support.  This  Berufsvormundschaft,  or 

542 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  543 


professional  guardianship,  is  a  new  institution  but  has  been 
so  successful  that,  according  to  Dawson,  a  society  of  fathers 
of  illegitimate  children  has  been  formed  to  resist  excessive 
or  unjust  demands.  There  is  a  special  guardianship  court 
to  which  appeal  can  be  made.  The  guardian  is  usually  a 
state  or  municipal  official  or  may  be  the  head  of  a  children’s 
asylum.  His  place  is  no  sinecure,  for  the  number  of  illegiti¬ 
mate  births  is  very  large  —  in  Munich,  about  one-third  of 
the  total  number.  The  guardian,  who  is  assisted  in  Munich 
by  eighty-eight  nurses,  looks  to  it  that  the  child  is  well 
treated  and,  where  necessary  and  practicable,  finds  foster- 
parents  for  it.  One  result  has  been  that  the  hideous  baby¬ 
farming  and  wholesale  murders  of  which  we  occasionally 
hear  in  America  are  unknown  in  the  Germany  of  to-day, 
for  the  guardians  exercise  the  greatest  care  and  the  foster- 
parents  are  kept  under  inspection.  In  Berlin  the  foster- 
mothers  are  licensed. 

Everything  is  done  to  check  infant  mortality.  The  birth  Infant 
rate  has  been  falling  very  steadily  of  late  years  —  even  more  mortality, 
rapidly  than  in  other  countries,  and  the  government  has  been 
making  great  efforts  to  reduce  the  death  rate.  That  it  has 
had  some  success  is  shown  by  statistics.  Between  1886  and 
1906,  the  Munich  death  rate  for  infants  had  fallen  from 
33  per  cent  to  20  per  cent,  and  even  more  striking  figures 
could  be  adduced  for  other  cities.  The  elaborate  statistics 
kept  by  German  cities  have  proved  of  great  use  in  pointing 
the  way  to  betterment.  It  has  been  found  that  illegitimate 
children  furnish  the  largest  quota  of  deaths  as  well  as  of 
degenerates,  paupers,  and  criminals.  It  was  found,  too,  that 
the  percentage  of  deaths  for  children  nursed  at  the  breast 
was  very  much  less  than  that  for  children  brought  up  on  the 
bottle.  Many  German  towns,  accordingly,  offer  prizes 
to  mothers  nursing  their  infants;  and  Charlottenburg,  one 
of  the  most  progressive  of  all  the  cities,  makes  regular  weekly 


544 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Mother- 

advice 

stations. 


Widowers’ 

lodging- 

houses. 


The 

public 

schools. 


Aid 

schools. 


payments,  the  limit  being  six  marks  a  week.  In  the  first 
year  of  this  experiment  the  mortality  of  the  children  thus 
cared  for  in  Charlottenburg  fell  to  6  per  cent,  as  opposed  to  a 
general  infant  mortality  for  the  city  of  14  per  cent.  Magde¬ 
burg,  which  also  gives  prizes  for  nursing,  has  organized  regu¬ 
lar  consultations  between  the  mothers  and  physicians,  while 
so-called  “ mother-advice  stations”  are  now  very  common; 
there  were  more  than  20  such  in  Munich  alone  in  1911, 
the  stations  at  the  same  time  distributing  pure  milk.  In 
Cassel,  which  city  in  1903  started  the  first  milk  kitchen  in 
Germany,  about  300,000  bottlefuls  are  distributed  yearly 
at  a  moderate  price  or  entirely  free  as  the  case  may  be. 
The  experiment  has  not  pauperized  the  women,  for  the  deficit 
to  the  town  is  only  1000  marks  a  year.  Day  nurseries  where 
mothers  can  place  their  infants  while  they  themselves  are 
at  work  are  very  common,  while  one  of  the  finest  institu¬ 
tions,  which  originated  in  Glasgow,  is  the  widowers’  lodging 
or  apartment  house  where  the  children  are  cared  for  en 
masse  and,  even  at  night,  crying  babies  are  prevented  from 
tormenting  their  breadwinners. 

In  all  but  a  very  few  states  the  age  for  entering  school  is 
six  years.  There  are  three  types  of  elementary  schools: 
the  Volksschulen,  or  free  public  schools,  attended  by  94  per 
cent  of  the  children;  the  Mittelschulen,  at  which  a  small 
tuition  fee  is  charged ;  and  the  Progymnasia ,  or  preparatory 
schools  for  the  gymnasia,  where  the  tuition  fee  is  quite  large 
from  a  German  point  of  view.  The  Volksschule  course  is 
eight  years,  and  the  subjects  taught  are  religion,  history, 
geography,  natural  science,  free-hand  drawing,  singing, 
gymnastics,  and,  of  course,  the  German  language. 

A  comparatively  new  development  is  the  aid  school,  or 
Hilfsschule,  that  now  has  separate  buildings  and  takes  care 
of  those  children  who,  after  repeated  attempts,  fail  to  keep 
up  with  their  classes  in  the  public  schools.  The  number  of 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  545 


such  children  is  not  small;  in  Breslau  alone  in  1911  there 
were  1036  of  them.  The  aid  schools  have  been  defined  as 
intellectual  hospitals.  Occasionally  they  can  bring  a  child 
so  far  that  he  can  resume  his  place  in  the  regular  school ; 
more  often  the  children  are  given  special  courses  adapted 
to  their  needs.  The  way  in  which  the  least  gleam  of  intel¬ 
ligence  is  hunted  down  and  fanned  into  life  is  truly  admi¬ 
rable.  A  few  years  ago  such  children  would  simply  have  been 
committed  to  asylums.  Now  there  are  even  preparatory 
classes  for  the  aid  school.  Charlottenburg  has  eight  kinder¬ 
gartens  for  such  children,  where  not  only  their  mental  needs 
are  looked  after,  but  where  they  are  fed  and  nursed  back 
to  bodily  strength.  These  schools  have  gardens  where  the 
feebler  ones  spend  a  part  of  the  day  lying  out  in  extension 
chairs.  There  are  also  forest  schools  for  the  tuberculous. 
Frankfort  has  a  farm  where  the  very  worst  cases  from  the 
aid  schools  are  kept  under  observation  with  a  view  to  devel¬ 
oping  some  one  ability  that  may  later  help  to  make  the  child 
self  supporting.  At  first  little  more  is  attempted  than  the 
building  up  of  the  children’s  physical  strength  and  the 
training  of  their  motor  impulses.  Gradually  they  become 
accustomed  to  regular  work  and  even  aid  in  erecting  the  farm 
buildings.  The  station  keeps  in  touch  with  farmers  and 
industrial  workers  with  a  view  to  finding  eventual  employ¬ 
ment,  and  an  investigation  extending  over  the  period  from 
1903  to  1909  showed  that  54  per  cent  of  the  boys  and  girls 
had  turned  out  satisfactorilv. 

There  is  wide  general  interest  in  the  aid  schools.  A 
congress  of  federated  schools  held  in  Bonn  in  1913  was 
attended  by  775  people,  and  the  results  reported  to  the 
congress  were  most  encouraging.  Indeed,  it  was  asserted, 
doubtless  with  some  exaggeration,  that,  out  of  4000  aid- 
school  children  investigated,  70  per  cent  had  become  self- 
supporting.  There  are  charitable  organizations  that  make 

VOL.  ii  —  2n 


Public 

kinder¬ 

gartens. 


Observa¬ 

tion 

stations. 


Aid  school 
congresses. 


546 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The 

“middle 

school.” 


it  their  chief  task  to  follow  up  the  aid-school  children  and 
help  them  in  later  life. 

The  Mittelschule  is  a  new  form  of  school  that  only  received 
its  present  organization  in  1910.  It  was  designed  to  meet 
the  needs  of  parents  who  desired  something  better  than  the 
“poor  man’s  school  ”  and  yet  could  not  afford  the  gymnasia. 
Attention  had  been  called  to  the  problem  because  so  many 
parents  had  been  obliged  to  withdraw  their  children  from 
the  gymnasia  either  from  lack  of  ability  to  pay  or  from  the 
failure  of  the  boys  to  keep  up  with  their  work.  Such  chil¬ 
dren  were  practically  shipwrecked,  so  rigidly  are  the  lines 
drawn  in  Germany  between  the  different  occupations.  That 
there  was  an  urgent  call  for  such  an  institution  is  shown  by 
the  fact  that  the  Mittelschulen  now  have  over  240,000  pupils, 
girls  and  boys,  —  a  number  greater  than  that  of  the  three 
higher  types  of  schools  combined.  The  training  is  very 
practical. 

The  gymnasia  are  the  aristocratic  schools  and  the  strong¬ 
holds  of  the  classics  — in  the  Wiirttemberg  gymnasia  ten 
hours  a  week  for  five  years  are  devoted  to  Latin  but  there 
are  now  so-called  real-gymnasia,  where  only  one  dead  lan¬ 
guage  is  taught  and  there  are  so-called  Ober-realschulen  where 
the  curriculum  is  entirely  modern.  The  worst  feature  of 
the  system  has  been  that,  once  embarked  on  a  given  course, 
there  was  no  turning  back,  no  shifting  over.  This  has  been 
remedied,  however,  in  many  towns  by  adopting  the  Frank¬ 
fort  plan,”  which  postpones  the  beginning  of  Latin  until  the 
fourth  school  year,  and  substitutes  French  for  the  younger 
classes.  The  plan  is  proving  popular,  but  there  is  still  a 
clamor  for  greater  unification.  “As  there  is  one  emperor 
and  one  empire,”  said  Dr.  Kerschensteiner  to  8000  teachers 
assembled  in  Kiel  shortly  before  the  war  broke  out,  “so 
there  should  be  one  school  and  one  body  of  teachers.”  But 
the  clericals  and  conservatives  are  much  opposed;  they 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  547 


like  to  see  the  apartness  of  the  gymnasia  preserved.  As 
matters  stand  to-day  a  man  of  the  aristocracy  who  has  not 
passed  his  final  examination  at  a  gymnasium  finds  almost 
every  career  closed  to  him. 

Two  tendencies  in  modern  German  education  are  of 
interest :  the  one  is  to  make  the  schools  more  practical,  to 
have  the  pupils  “do”  rather  than  “learn,”  the  other,  which 
has  made  much  more  headway,  is  to  make  the  instruction  as 
realistic  as  possible  by  the  aid  of  every  kind  of  illustrative 
material.  With  regard  to  the  first-mentioned  tendency  the 
great  “German  Teachers’  Association”  has  gone  on  record 
as  favoring  a  reform  such  as  would  “bring  the  intellectual 
powers  more  into  accord  with  the  organs  of  the  senses”  and 
“take  heed  of  the  child’s  delight  in  actual  creative  work.” 
As  a  careful  student  of  the  question  puts  it,  personalities 
are  more  needed  than  heads  stuffed  with  knowledge.  The 
schools  have  been  training  the  ear  at  the  expense  of  the  hand. 
Go  out  and  measure  a  real  field  rather  than  work  out  a 
problem  regarding  a  supposed  one;  learn  to  count  from  a 
three-leafed  clover,  a  four-wheeled  cart,  a  five-pointed  maple 
leaf,  a  six-legged  butterfly;  make  a  visit  to  the  factory  or 
the  mine  the  starting  point  for  your  technical  knowledge; 
get  your  geometry  from  arches,  windows  and  roofs,  your 
zoology  and  botany  from  the  fields  and  woods,  your  physics 
from  electric  plants,  pumps,  and  water  supplies  in  general. 
Actual  mountains,  lakes,  rivers,  trees,  thermometers  and 
barometers,  stereopticons,  watches,  clocks,  telephones,  ma¬ 
chinery  of  all  kinds ;  these  should  be  the  real  text-books. 

That  there  is  truth  in  all  this  no  one  can  doubt,  but  there 
are  insuperable  difficulties  in  the  way  of  turning  it  into  a 
fixed  programme  and  discarding  the  old  approved  school 
curriculum.  It  is  to  be  regarded  as  a  compromise  that  so 
much  outside  aid  to  visualization  is  being  brought  into  the 
schools.  One  is  amazed  when  visiting  a  modern  school 


The  “do” 
school. 


Aids  to 
visualiza¬ 
tion. 


548 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


School 

hygiene. 


museum  to  see  the  innumerable  devices  of  this  kind.  For 
religious  instruction  one  can  buy  Solomon’s  temples,  altars 
for  burnt  offerings,  manna,  myrrh,  aloe,  and  hyssop,  water 
from  the  Jordan,  salt  from  the  Dead  Sea,  crowns  of  thorns, 
golden  calves,  David’s  slings,  parchment  indulgences,  and 
other  such  objects ;  one  firm  in  Berlin  has  between  60,000 
and  70,000  stereopticon  slides  representing  different  phases 
of  ancient  art ;  the  number  of  pictures  and  of  illustrated 
books  on  all  subjects  is  legion.  Some  of  the  schools  have 
their  own  moving-picture  apparatus  and  there  is  a  “  Central 
office  for  scientific  and  school  cinematography.”  Grapho- 
phones  grind  out  the  pronunciations  of  words ;  calculating 
apparatuses  represent  fruit  gardens ;  false  heads  and  throats 
show  the  actions  of  the  vocal  cords ;  in  some  schools  fresh 
hearts,  stomachs,  lungs,  eyes,  etc.,  are  procured  from  the 
butcher  for  the  classes  in  biology,  while  firms  make  a  spe¬ 
cialty  of  pickled  or  embalmed  organs.  There  are  skeletons 
with  attachments  for  hanging  the  organs  in  their  proper 
places.  For  fifty  or  sixty  marks  one  can  even  purchase  the 
arm  of  a  human  embryo,  while  in  some  of  the  industrial  art 
schools  the  young  pupils,  girls  as  well  as  boys,  sit  and  draw 
details  from  actual  human  corpses. 

In  the  matter  of  school  hygiene  Germany  is  very  far 
advanced.  The  new  school  buildings  are  strikingly  hand¬ 
some  and  airy.  They  now  have  their  regular  physicians 
and  some  have  instituted  very  thorough  examinations  of 
every  pupil.  Frankfort  gives  a  regular  certificate  of  hfealth 
while  Wiesbaden  has  its  pupils  reexamined  in  the  third,  fifth 
and  eighth,  or  final  year.  Often  the  physician  confers  with 
the  teacher  and  parents  as  to  the  child’s  future  vocation. 
The  trouble  hitherto  has  been  that  too  many  children  are 
assigned  to  one  physician,  —  in  Berlin  about  5000,  in  Bar¬ 
men  almost  12,000 !  Of  course  under  such  circumstances 
the  examinations  are  perfunctory.  On  the  other  hand  the 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  549 


physician  is  not  expected  to  treat  the  actual  cases  himself. 
Charlottenburg  has  Sisters  of  Mercy  whose  duty  it  is  to  see 
that  the  physicians’  recommendations  are  carried  out. 

The  dental  work,  too,  is  admirable.  Diisseldorf,  since 
1912,  has  a  school  clinic  consisting  of  nine  well-lighted  rooms, 
besides  operating  and  sterilizing  rooms,  a  library,  a  labora¬ 
tory,  and  facilities  for  photographing.  Parents  who  can 
afford  it  pay  one  mark  yearly,  but  the  charge  is  remitted 
to  those  with  an  income  of  less  than  1200  marks.  In  that 
case,  too,  even  the  car  fares  of  the  children  are  paid.  The 
proportion  of  those  with  defective  teeth  is  found  to  be 
very  large  indeed.  Out  of  21,119  children  examined  in 
1912-13  in  Diisseldorf,  17,230  had  to  be  treated,  on  an 
average,  three  or  four  times.  In  Munich  out  of  17,384,  no 
less  than  16,196  had  their  teeth  classed  as  “defective  or 
bad.”  The  clinics  furnish  tooth  brushes  either  at  cost 
price  or  free.  Indirectly  the  clinics  are  doing  educational 
work;  for  the  parents,  seeing  the  importance  attached 
to  the  matter,  are  more  anxious  to  have  their  own  teeth 
attended  to. 

The  schools  have  latterly  awakened  to  an  appreciation  of 
the  benefit  of  baths  and  every  modern  schoolhouse  is  now 
equipped  with  them.  They  are  considered  such  an  inno¬ 
vation,  however,  that  the  consent  of  the  parents  must  first 
be  asked  before  making  their  use  compulsory.  Pforzheim 
sends  out  a  little  yearly  pamphlet  drawing  attention  to  the 
shower  baths  and  asking  for  the  cooperation  of  the  parents. 

One  evil  in  the  schools,  the  existence  of  which  will  seem 
incredible  to  many,  must  be  mentioned  here  :  the  use  of  al¬ 
cohol  by  the  pupils.  The  children  themselves,  of  course, 
are  not  so  much  to  blame  as  are  their  ignorant  parents,  many 
of  whom  think  that  beer  is  wholesome  and  strengthening. 
But  the  nation  of  late  has  been  thoroughly  aroused  to  the 
extent  of  the  evil.  Various  comprehensive  investigations 


School 

dental 

work. 


School 

baths. 


The  use 
of  alcohol 
in  the 
schools. 


550  A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

have  been  made.  An  examination  of  30,000  pupils  in  Sax¬ 
ony  showed  that  197  drank  brandy  daily  and  that  2282  drank 
it  at  least  once  a  week.  An  inquiry  by  a  teachers  temper¬ 
ance  society,  conducted  in  different  parts  of  the  Empire, 
showed  that  out  of  7338  children  examined  only  2  per  cent 
had  never  tasted  alcohol  and  that  11  per  cent  indulged  in  it 
daily  in  one  or  another  form.  Many  schools  have  now 
opened  a  regular  campaign  against  the  evil.  In  the  Work¬ 
man’s  Museum”  in  Munich  there  are  wax  models  showing 
the  ravages  of  alcoholism  on  the  human  organs ;  and  the 
“  beer  liver,”  swollen  to  many  times  its  normal  size  and  honey¬ 
combed  by  disease,  is  a  sight  to  frighten  the  boldest  child. 
It  may  not  be  entirely  due  to  that  beer  liver,  but  the  con¬ 
sumption  of  beer  in  Munich  between  1912  and  1913  fell  off 
by  20,000  hectolitres. 

Play-  There  have  been  great  advances  of  late  in  the  matter  of 

grounds.  playgrounds,  both  school  and  public.  Breslau  now  devotes 
ninety  million  square  metres  to  the  purpose,  and  Berlin  has 
seemingly  endless  tracts  stretching  along  the  bank  of  the 
Spree  in  the  direction  of  Treptow.  Here  thousands  of 
children  can  be  seen  of  a  summer  afternoon  engaged  in  foot¬ 
ball  and  other  games.  Once  a  year  the  city  organizes  a 
regular  holiday  of  sports  and  feeds  the  children  throughout 
the  day  at  a  cost  to  the  city  treasury  of  some  30,000  marks. 
An  interesting  experiment  is  being  tried  in  Konigsberg. 
In  certain  new  parts  of  the  city  the  regulations  regarding 
frontage  lines  are  suspended  and  the  houses  may  be  built 
well  forward  on  condition  that  the  back  yards  be  all  thrown 
into  one.  Here  the  children  can  play  together  and  yet  re¬ 
main  under  closer  supervision  than  in  the  public  parks. 
The  de-  At  the  age  of  fourteen  the  average  German  boy  ends  his 
generation  elementary  school  course,  is  confirmed  in  the  faith  of  his 
of  youth.  fatjiers?  an(j  goes  out  as  an  apprentice  or  as  an  unskilled 
worker.  In  either  case  he  is  bound  to  attend  the  contin- 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  551 


uation  schools  for  a  number  of  hours  a  week  until  his  seven¬ 
teenth  or  eighteenth  year.  A  few  years  ago  some  startling 
evidence  in  the  way  of  statistics  waked  Germans  up  to  the 
fact  that  all  was  not  well  with  these  youths.  In  the  large 
cities  nearly  two-thirds  of  those  who  presented  themselves 
for  military  service  were  found  not  up  to  the  physical  stand¬ 
ards,  while  at  the  same  time  the  police  records  showed  a 
great  increase  in  the  matter  of  juvenile  crime.  The  gener¬ 
ally  accepted  explanation  was  that  the  evolution  of  industry 
had  drawn  more  than  a  million  and  a  half  boys  and  girls 
awav  from  the  farms  and  the  small  towns  and  freed  them 
from  the  old  restraints  of  church,  school,  and  family.  The 
high  cost  of  lodging  had  crowded  them  together ;  their  only 
relaxations  were  cheap  shows  and  amusements  that  were 
often  harmful. 

The  work  of  reclaiming  youth  was  taken  up  with  a  zeal 
and  a  unity  that  are  intensely  interesting  to  follow.  Not 
private  individuals  alone,  but  still  more  the  cities  and  the 
state  took  up  the  task.  In  1908  the  Prussian  minister  for 
trade  and  commerce,  whose  department  controls  the  indus¬ 
trial  continuation  schools,  issued  a  liberal  and  suggestive 
decree  concerning  the  activities  to  be  encouraged  in  those 
institutions:  the  different  sports  are  enumerated  that  can 
best  be  carried  on  in  the  different  seasons ;  it  is  urged  that 
comfortable  quarters  be  secured  where  apprentices  can 
spend  their  free  hours  in  the  society  of  those  of  their  own 
age,  and  that  books,  lectures,  music,  and  other  means  of 
entertainment  be  provided  for  them. 

Associations  for  the  furtherance  of  the  interests  of  youths 
have  long  existed  in  Germany  as  in  every  other  country. 
In  the  Roman  Catholic  church  alone  there  are  no  less  than 
2615  sodalities  or  congregations  with  266,000  members,  and 
921  Gesellenvereine,  or  journeymen’s  associations,  with 
61,000  members.  The  Protestant  church,  too,  has  its 


The  work 
of  re¬ 
demption. 


Catholic 

associa¬ 

tions. 


552 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Protestant 

associa¬ 

tions. 


Secular 

associa¬ 

tions. 


The 

Wander¬ 

vogel. 


The 

“Central 

Com¬ 

mittee.” 


“Young  Men’s  Christian  Associations,”  introduced  after 
the  American  model  in  1883 ;  its  White  Cross  League,” 
borrowed  from  England ;  its  “  International  Christian 
Waiters’  Association,”  with  homes  in  Frankfort,  Diisseldorf, 
Berlin,  Breslau,  Hamburg,  Leipzig,  and  Cologne. 

There  are  associations  for  social  democratic  youths,  too, 
under  the  auspices  of  which  some  3500  lectures  are  given  a 
year,  while  one  of  the  news  journals  alone  has  a  circulation 
of  80,000.  More  important  still  are  the  German  gymnastic 
associations  with  more  than  a  million  members,  the  German 
Football  League  with  161,613  members,  the  German  ath¬ 
letic  associations  with  131,137  members,  as  well  as  special 
“German”  associations  for  almost  every  conceivable  form 
of  sport :  skating,  fencing,  golf,  tennis,  hockey,  cycling,  row¬ 
ing,  etc.  There  are  innumerable  walking  clubs,  too,  like 
the  “League  of  German  Wandervogel,”  or  “migratory  birds,” 
the  “national  league  for  young  wanderers,  etc.”  The 
Wandervogel  as  a  body  have  been  through  so  many  revolu¬ 
tions,  schisms,  and  dramatic  experiences  that  a  three- 
volume  work  has  been  published  about  them. 

No  nation  but  Germany  with  its  amazing  genius  for  or¬ 
ganization  could  have  brought  such  order  and  unity  into 
all  these  separate  endeavors  and  focussed  them  all  on  the 
single  purpose  of  bettering  the  race.  Since  1891  there  is  a 
“Central  Committee  for  the  care  of  the  people  and  of  youth,” 
which  in  reality  is  not  a  committee  but  a  huge  association. 
As  members  we  find  state  governments  (Prussia  pays  7000 
marks  a  year),  no  less  than  328  communities  with  Berlin  at 
the  head,  and  nineteen  associations  of  which  one  alone, 
young  Germany,  has  750,000  members.  The  main  object 
of  the  “Central  Committee, ” as  it  says  in  its  programmers 
to  “make  exercise  in  the  open  air  and  especially  games  for 
the  people  and  for  the  young  the  general  custom  in  Ger¬ 
many.”  Congresses  are  held,  each  year  in  a  different  part 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  553 

of  the  empire.  A  comprehensive  year-book  is  also  pub¬ 
lished  and  the  committee  issues  a  periodical,  K dryer  und 
Geist.  It  has  sub-committees  for  every  kind  of  activity, 
one  even  for  the  “  strengthening  of  the  female  sex.”  To 
the  “ Committee”  the  various  sport  associations  turn  for 
decisions  as  to  the  rules  of  games,  and  during  its  existence 
it  has  trained  well  over  20,000  persons  in  special  courses  as 
teachers  of  sport.  More  comprehensive  in  its  objects  is  a 
similar  organization  founded  in  1906,  and  called  the  “  Centre 
for  the  whole  field  of  popular  welfare.”  To  it,  also,  belong 
state  authorities,  leagues  of  cities,  chambers  of  commerce, 
all  sorts  of  associations,  big  firms,  and  private  individuals. 

Its  special  fields  are  investigation  and  propaganda;  and  it, 
too,  publishes  a  large  amount  of  literature. 

Meanwhile  closer  touch  between  many  of  the  different -“Young 
associations,  like  “boy  scouts”  (Pfadfinder) ,  some  forms  of  Germany.” 
the  Wandervogel,  and  the  different  sport  clubs,  as  well  as 
hitherto  unorganized  elements,  has  been  achieved  by  “Young 
Germany,”  founded  by  General  von  der  Goltz.  According 
to  the  latter  there  is  no  intention  of  “militarizing.”  Young 
Germany  aims  merely  “  to  supply  the  army  with  recruits 
sound  in  body  and  soul,  whose  native  capacities  have  been 
brought  out  by  the  'young  German’  leaders.”  These  leaders 
are  usually  officers  of  the  army,  and  the  experience  is  as  use¬ 
ful  for  them  as  it  is  for  their  young  charges.  On  the  whole 
the  officers  have  devoted  themselves  to  the  task  with  en¬ 
thusiasm.  They  lead  squads  of  boys  on  long  tramps,  dur¬ 
ing  which  they  camp  in  the  open  or  spend  nights  in  the 
barracks.  A  regular  part  of  the  programme  is  to  teach  boys 
“to  brave  wind  and  weather,  night  and  cold.”  There  is  no 
limit  to  the  variety  of  useful,  manly  activities;  the  eye  is 
trained  to  sight  objects  at  a  distance  or  in  the  air;  the  ear 
to  detect  the  nature  of  sounds.  From  the  hoof-beats,  for 
instance,  it  can  be  told  whether  a  horse  has  a  rider  or  is  run- 


554 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Resources 

of 

“Young 

Ger¬ 

many.” 


Ministe¬ 
rial  decree 
of  1911. 


ning  free.  Tracks  and  trails  are  followed,  trees  are  climbed 
for  the  sake  of  taking  observations,  maps  are  read  and  fol¬ 
lowed.  Games  are  played,  among  them  the  elaborate 
Kriegsspiel,  or  war  game.  First  aid  to  the  injured  is  prac¬ 
tised,  and  the  boys  learn  to  bandage,  to  tie  knots,  and  to 
construct  impromptu  litters. 

“Young  Germany”  has  funds  at  its  disposal  from  various 
sources :  among  them  a  lottery  which  brings  in  an  income  of 
150,000  marks  a  year.  There  have  been  handed  over  to 
the  organization,  too,  the  royalties  from  a  book  written  by 
the  Crown  Prince  and  entitled  Germany  in  Arms.  By  a 
special  arrangement  and  at  a  cost  of  only  10  Pfennige.  or 

cents  apiece,  all  the  750,000  members  are  insured  against 

accidents. 

By  a  regular  sort  of  treaty  between  “Young  Germany’ 
and  the  Roman  Catholic  church  authorities  young  Catho¬ 
lics  may  join  the  organization  which,  in  turn,  pledges  itself 
that  “in  general,”  in  Catholic  neighborhoods,  the  tramps, 
sports,  etc.,  shall  not  interfere  with  the  regular  hours  for 

divine  service. 

A  decree  of  the  Prussian  Kultusminister,  in  whose  hands 
are  all  educational  and  religious  matters,  shows  better  than 
anything  else  how  the  government  feels  it  to  be  its  function 
to  take  an  active  part  in  all  such  endeavors  as  have  been 
described  above  —  to  give  the  impetus,  to  unify  and  consoli¬ 
date,  in  short  to  assume  the  ultimate  direction.  The  decree 
in  question  is  of  January  18,  1911.  It  begins  by  describing 
the  evil  effects  of  the  modern  struggle  for  existence  on  the 
health  and  morals  of  the  young,  tells  what  a  wide  field  of 
usefulness  is  here  opened  up  to  city  administrations  and 
school  boards,  and  recommends  the  establishment  of  city 
and  rural  special  committees.  Not  compulsory  training, 
not  reformatory  work  in  the  criminal  sense  is  needed,  but 
preventive  work,  work  that  shall  be  voluntary  for  all 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  555 


concerned.  “In  order  to  leave  no  doubt  whatever,”  says 
this  Prussian  minister,  “of  the  spirit  in  which  I  wish  the 
matter  treated  and  of  how  I  seek  to  further  it,  I  will  state 
that  the  care  of  youth  ( Jugendpflege )  does  not  admit  the 
application  of  any  bureaucratic  pattern  or  scheme.”  All 
existing  organizations  are  to  be  encouraged ;  the  authorities 
are  to  place  public  buildings  at  the  disposal  of  the  move¬ 
ment,  while  the  clergy  and  teachers  are  urged  to  lend  their 
aid.  So,  for  that  matter,  are  sportsmen,  gymnasts,  physi¬ 
cians,  and  other  workers.  The  state  will  supply  funds  which 
primarily  are  to  be  expended  in  training  instructors,  and  sure 
enough  the  Diet  voted  a  million  marks  in  1911,  a  million 
and  a  half  in  1912,  two  million  and  a  half  in  1913,  and  three 
million  and  a  half  in  1914.  In  the  year  1911,  366  courses 
of  instruction  with  14,465  participants  were  held ;  in  1912, 
434  courses  with  22,139  participants,  half  of  whom  were 
school-teachers.  Other  states,  notably  Saxony,  Hesse, 
Wiirttemberg,  and  Baden,  have  followed  Prussia’s  example 
and  made  appropriations.  How  thoroughly  the  govern¬ 
ments  are  interested  in  the  matter  is  shown  by  the  fact  that 
there  is  a  “German  Imperial  Commission  for  the  scientific 
investigation  of  sport  and  bodily  exercise”  with  a  laboratory 
of  its  own  in  Charlottenburg.  Hamburg  also  has  an  “In¬ 
stitute  for  the  investigation  of  youth”  which  has  more  to  do 
with  mental  development. 

A  year  after  issuing  his  decree  the  Kultusminister  reported 
to  the  Diet  that  considerable  progress  had  been  made,  that 
in  almost  every  province  the  organizations  recommended 
had  been  formed,  and  that  90,000  more  boys  were  now 
reached  and  helped  than  had  been  the  case  in  1911. 

The  boys  themselves  have  not  been  idle  in  the  matter  of 
organizing.  In  November,  1913,  there  was  held  on  the 
Hoher  Meissner,  near  Cassel,  a  congress  of  3000  boys  and 
girls  representing  fourteen  associations,  such  as  the  “  German 


Govern¬ 
ment 
grants  for 
the 

“youth- 

move¬ 

ment.” 


Scientific 
investiga¬ 
tion  of 
sport. 


“Free 

German 

youth.” 


556 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  “Free 

German” 

students. 


Preparing 
for  the 
Olympic 
games. 


League  of  abstinent  students,”  the  “Vortrupp  League,” 
and  other  societies  inculcating  temperance,  chastity,  liberty 
of  thought,  and  similar  virtues.  The  leaders  of  the  assem¬ 
blage  went  into  solemn  conference,  deliberated  all  night, 
and  finally  evolved  this  formula :  “The  Free  German  Youth 
wishes  to  direct  its  life  according  to  its  own  determination, 
on  its  own  responsibility,  with  inward  sincerity.  The 
Free  German  Youth,  as  one  man,  advocates  inward  liberty 
under  all  circumstances.”  Extravagant,  yes ;  but  it  shows 
that  youth  is  alive  and  stirring.  Most  of  the  associations 
that  made  up  “Free  German  Youth”  had  adopted  anti- 
militarism  as  a  plank  in  their  platform.  In  the  universities 
there  is  also  a  “Free  German  Student”  association  that 
decries  the  custom  of  connecting  everything  with  the  idea 
of  a  fatherland  bristling  with  arms  and  laughs  at  the  songs  of 
some  of  the  other  associations  as  treating  only  of  the  thunder 
of  battle,  glorious  graves,  hatred  of  the  English,  and  ven¬ 
geance  on  the  French.  One  of  the  publications  of  the 
Freie  deutsche  Studentenschaft  chooses  as  the  special  butt  of 
its  ridicule  a  poem  where  a  member  of  the  Wehrkraftverein, 
the  Bavarian  society  for  defence,  has  but  one  last  wish 
for  his  Welirkraft  badge  : 

Und  als  er  es  empfangen 

Da  macht  er  sick  bereit. 

“  Begrabt  ihr  mich,  I  hr  Lieben 

In  meinem  Wehrkraftkleid  !  ” 

The  new  attitude  towards  sport  has  been  particularly 
noticeable  since  the  bad  showing  in  the  great  Olympic 
games  held  at  Stockholm  in  1912.  The  games  of  1916  were 
to  have  been  held  in  Berlin,  and  a  magnificent  concrete  sta¬ 
dium  had  been  erected  for  the  purpose.  An  “  Imperial  Com¬ 
mittee  for  the  Olympic  Games”  had  been  formed;  from 
grants  of  the  Reichstag  and  from  other  sources  large  sums  had 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  557 


been  collected  and  victory  had  been  organized  with  the  usual 
German  thoroughness.  The  Kultusminister  had  called  upon 
the  schools,  and  the  war  minister  on  the  army  to  hold  ath¬ 
letic  meets  all  over  the  empire ;  and  all  promising  material 
was  to  be  handed  over  to  the  “Imperial  Committee”  for 
special  training.  Five  hundred  meets  in  the  army  and  two 
thousand  in  the  schools  had  either  already  been  held  or  were 
about  to  be  held  when  the  war  broke  out.  A  special  com¬ 
mittee  had  been  sent  to  America  to  see  wherein  lay  the  ac¬ 
knowledged  superiority  of  that  people  and  had  published  a 
glowing  report  stating  the  features  worthy  of  imitation. 
English  trainers  had  been  engaged  at  high  salaries.  To  con¬ 
quer  in  those  games  was  the  dominant  passion  of  the  whole 
German  youth.  A  victory  in  football,  won  over  Paris  in  the 
Berlin  stadium  in  June,  1914,  had  aroused  the  greatest  enthu¬ 
siasm  ;  and  army  contests  held  in  the  same  place  at  the  end 
of  the  month  had  filled  the  great  arena  for  three  successive 
days,  the  emperor  himself  awarding  the  prizes.  The  mem¬ 
ory  of  those  thousands  of  splendid  young  soldiers  who  only 
a  few  weeks  later  were  called  to  the  deadliest  kind  of  real 
warfare  is  one  that  will  always  remain  with  the  historian. 
The  nature  of  the  sports  was  significant  of  the  thorough 
training  in  the  army.  In  one  of  the  events  some  fifty  sol¬ 
diers  started  at  the  farther  end  of  a  long  pool,  dashed  into 
the  water,  then  out  over  every  sort  of  obstacle,  including  a 
perpendicular  wall  higher  than  themselves,  until  they  came 
tearing  down  the  home  stretch.  Not  one  of  them  remained 
behind.  Another  race,  for  officers,  was  over  rough  country 
for  a  distance  of  four  miles.  It  was  won  by  a  prince  of  the 
royal  house.  Instead  of  parade-grounds  the  German  army 
now  has  what  we  may  call  obstacle-fields. 

Enough  has  been  said  to  show  that  all  along  the  line  the 
struggle  for  the  bodily  and  moral  redemption  of  the  young 
—  the  two  go  together  —  has  been  taken  up  in  Germany 


The 

Berlin- 

Paris 

football 

match. 

Army 

contests. 


Juvenile 

delin¬ 

quents. 


558 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


with  the  utmost  energy.  The  courts,  too,  have  recently 
changed  all  their  methods  of  dealing  with  juvenile  delin¬ 
quents.  The  hand  of  the  law  no  longer  merely  cuffs  and 
beats;  it  leads  along  the  path  to  better  things.  In  1908, 
after  considerable  agitation  on  the  subject,  the  first  juvenile 
court  was  established  in  Frankfort,  and  the  judge  became  the 
guardian  rather  than  the  condemner  of  the  youths.  There 
is  now  such  a  combination  of  judge  and  guardian  in  no  less 
than  556  localities.  It  was  a  great  advance  in  Berlin  when 
it  was  determined  no  longer  to  try  cases  against  juveniles 
in  the  criminal  court-house  in  Moabit,  where  the  boys  were 
apt  to  come  into  contact  with  the  really  bad  and  depraved, 
but  rather  in  the  civil  court  building.  The  Berlin  judges 
now  extend  their  guardianship  not  merely  to  the  delinquent 
himself,  but  to  his  brothers  and  sisters  as  well,  for  they  look 
carefully  into  the  environment  that  may  have  disposed  the 
youth  to  crime.  They  are  assisted  by  a  “  Central  Associa¬ 
tion  for  the  reformation  of  youth,”  which  conducts  the  actual 
investigations  and  which  not  only  looks  into  the  boy’s 
home  affairs,  but  into  his  school  record.  Each  delinquent 
boy,  moreover,  is  asked,  though  not  compelled,  to  submit  to 
a  complete  physical  examination.  On  the  ground  of  all 
the  information  thus  obtained  the  judge  makes  up  his  mind 
whether  or  not  the  boy  was  sufficiently  intelligent  to  realize 
the  seriousness  of  the  act  that  he  has  committed,  and  if  the 
conclusion  be  favorable  he  is  not  sentenced,  but  is  handed 
over  to  the  care  of  the  proper  organizations.  In  any  case 
the  proceedings  are  divested  of  their  old-time  terrifying 
formality.  The  boy  is  not  placed  on  the  prisoner’s  bench, 
nor  does  the  judge  even  sit  in  his  usual  seat.  While  await¬ 
ing  trial  the  boys  are  not  placed  in  cells,  but  are  given  shelter 
and  occupation  in  special  homes  for  the  purpose. 

The  whole  subject  has  been  receiving  much  attention,  and 
new  laws,  to  apply  to  the  whole  state  of  Prussia,  occupied 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  559 


the  Prussian  Diet  on  the  eve  of  the  war.  Cities  have  made 
studies  with  regard  to  every  phase  of  the  problem,  and 
Diisseldorf  even  made  an  investigation  among  20,000  school 
children  in  order  to  find  how  many  of  them  might  have  been 
affected  by  the  habit  of  attending  moving-picture  shows. 
It  was  found  that  18,000  of  them  had  been  at  least  once  to 
such  entertainments  and  that  quite  a  large  number  attended 
them  every  day.  Many  cities  forbid  the  admission  of  chil¬ 
dren  under  sixteen  years  of  age.  Not  only  films  but  the 
books  on  news  stands  and  the  pictures  in  shop  windows  are 
censored  to  a  degree  that  has  provoked  some  opposition,  for 
ignorant  police  authorities  have  condemned  some  of  the 
finest  classic  productions.  The  work,  however,  has  not  been 
purely  negative.  Much  has  been  done  to  spread  good  liter¬ 
ature  through  cheap  editions  that  can  be  purchased  on  the 
penny-in-the-slot  plan,  and  some  cities  have  even  started 
their  own  moving-picture  shows.  The  “Urania”  in  Ber¬ 
lin  gives  representations  of  real  scientific  value,  and  the  whole 
building  is  a  sort  of  practical  physical  laboratory  where  the 
visitors  can  turn  cranks  and  set  the  exhibits  in  motion. 

At  eighteen  the  ordinary  German  youth  is  emancipated 
from  apprenticeship  and  from  the  continuation  school  and 
seeks  to  establish  himself  in  life.  A  system  of  free  public 
labor  exchanges  or  employment  offices  ( offentliche  Arbeits- 
nacKweise  they  are  called)  has  made  this  task  much  less 
formidable  than  it  was  only  a  few  years  ago.  These  Arbeits- 
nachweise  found  employment  for  a  million  persons  in  1901, 
for  1,600,000  in  1913,  and  for  2,100,000  in  1914.  They  are 
organized  much  as  are  the  cooperative  societies  or  the  asso¬ 
ciations  for  the  betterment  of  youth,  with  hundreds  of 
associations  grouped  into  leagues  or  central  associations,  and 
with  an  “imperial  central  association”  and  a  central  infor¬ 
mation  bureau  at  Berlin.  The  war  has  given  the  whole 
institution  a  great  impetus;  new  associations  were  formed 


General 
interest 
in  the 
boy 

problem. 


The  labor 
bureaus 
or  public 
employ¬ 
ment 
offices. 


560  A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Impor¬ 
tance  of 
the  labor 
bureau. 


Efficiency 
of  the 
bureaus. 


in  all  directions  and  even  new  leagues.  The  associations 
are  usually  administered  by  committees  representing  the 
more  important  local  organizations  both  of  employers  and 
employed,  this  method  having  proved  much  more  satis¬ 
factory  than  that  of  having  the  municipal  authorities  appoint 
the  directors.  The  manager  is  a  business  man,  not  a  poli¬ 
tician,  and  on  his  tact  and  ability  hangs  the  success  of  the 
enterprise. 

This  institution  of  the  labor-bureau  is  a  much  more  impor¬ 
tant  one,  much  more  far-reaching  in  its  influence,  than  the 
casual  observer  would  imagine.  It  saves  the  workers  mil¬ 
lions  of  marks  and  much  waste  of  time  formerly  spent  in 
running  from  employer  to  employer  or  in  inserting  and  an¬ 
swering  advertisements.  Four  cities,  Berlin,  Cologne, 
Elberfeld  and  Munich,  now  have  handsome  buildings  in 
which  to  house  the  bureaus  and  have  thus  become  the  centres 
for  a  whole  new  range  of  activities.  The  institution  does 
much  to  raise  the  self-respect  of  the  jobless  man.  The 
buildings  are  like  club-houses,  with  comfortable,  well-heated 
and  well-lighted  waiting-rooms  where  refreshments  can  be 
purchased  at  a  low  price.  There  are  tailor  shops  for  making 
the  applicants  more  presentable;  writing  rooms  where 
clerks  out  of  employment  can  obtain  temporary  work  at 
copying  and  folding ;  free  legal  advisers  to  whom  they  can 
bring  their  troubles.  The  bureaus  are  conducted  with  the 
utmost  efficiency.  The  system  of  control  is  admirable, 
every  applicant  with  his  demands  and  his  qualifications 
being  carefully  card-catalogued  and  indexed.  There  is  a 
breadth  of  view,  a  generosity  that  is  only  obtainable  through 
long  experience.  It  is  now  considered  safe  to  supply  men 
sent  to  distant  points  with  their  railway  tickets  and  trust 
to  the  honesty  of  their  employers  for  reimbursement.  This 
is  frequently  done  and  the  results  have  been  satisfactory. 
The  telephone  is  used  lavishly  and  as  a  rule  cases  are  dis- 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  561 


posed  of  within  the  twenty-four  hours.  It  is  interesting 
to  note  that  in  the  German  bureaus  it  is  no  longer  merely 
the  unskilled  laborer  who  comes  to  seek  employment.  About 
half  of  the  places  filled  in  Cologne  are  of  men  trained  to 
some  special  occupation  and  there  is  a  marked  tendency  to 
go  higher  and  higher  in  the  social  scale.  Teachers  and 
engineers  are  now  among  the  applicants. 

Many  of  the  bureaus  make  it  their  special  care  to  find  work 

XJ 

for  persons  of  diminished  earning  power  who  would  other¬ 
wise  be  a  charge  on  the  charity  institutions  of  their  city. 
Moral  and  physical  wrecks,  discharged  prisoners  and  con¬ 
sumptives,  the  maim,  the  halt,  and  the  blind,  are  given 
part-time  work  if  it  be  anywhere  obtainable.  A  capable  man¬ 
ager  establishes  personal  relations  with  employers.  Doubt¬ 
less  the  best  results  in  this  regard  have  been  obtained  in 
Diisseldorf  where,  according  to  a  regular  expert’s  computa¬ 
tion,  enough  money  has  thus  been  saved  the  city’s  institu¬ 
tions  to  pay  the  whole  expense  of  the  bureau  itself. 

One  feature  of  the  modern  German  labor  exchange,  al¬ 
though  sometimes  seen  independently  of  it,  is  the  free  city 
real  estate  agency.  The  object  is  to  suit  the  laborer  with  a 
house  or  apartment  with  the  least  possible  trouble  and  loss 
of  time.  Landlords  with  apartments  to  rent  must  send  in 
full  descriptions  of  the  rooms  with  drawings  to  show  the 
positions  of  the  windows,  the  plumbing  arrangements,  etc. 
Often,  as  in  Cologne,  the  agency  sends  its  own  men  to  make 
the  drawings.  The  applicant  can  see  at  a  glance  whether 
the  rooms  are  suitable  for  his  needs  and  is  sure  of  not  being 
cheated.  People  of  not  inconsiderable  means  are  begin¬ 
ning  to  make  use  of  these  Wohnungsnachweise  or  free  real 
estate  agencies. 

Once  embarked  in  industry  or  even,  now,  in  domestic 
service,  the  German  worker  begins  to  feel  the  burdens  of 
the  national  compulsory  insurance.  He  must  pay  his  share 

VOL.  II  —  2o 


Placing 

the 

handi¬ 

capped. 


Free  real 

estate 

agencies. 


562 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The 

national 

compul¬ 

sory 

insurance. 


A  French 
verdict  on 
the  in¬ 
surance. 


The 
“Ordi¬ 
nance  of 
1911.” 


of  the  sickness  insurance  and  also  of  the  invalidity  and 
survivor  insurance,  while  the  accident  insurance  is  altogether 
paid  by  the  employers.  But  the  benefits  far  outweigh  the 
burdens.  It  is  possible  for  a  young  man  of  twenty-one  who  has 
worked  since  he  was  sixteen  and  has  paid  in  only  forty  marks 
to  receive  an  invalidity  pension  of  141  marks  for  the  rest  of 
his  life.  Between  1885  and  1910  indemnities  were  paid  or 
services  rendered  to  no  less  than  100  million  persons;  and 
since  1911  sweeping  extensions  have  been  made  both  as 
regards  the  number  of  persons  insured  and  the  amount  of 
the  benefits  accorded  to  the  individual. 

This  national  or  social  insurance  is  Germany’s  great  con¬ 
tribution  to  modern  civilization  and  almost  every  great 
nation  has  copied  the  institution  either  in  whole  or  in  part. 
In  the  words  of  the  well-known  Frenchman,  Edouard  Fuster : 
“The  money  spent  in  carrying  out  the  insurance  laws  in 
Germany  reappears  in  a  thousand  forms.  It  is  transmuted 
into  family  happiness,  health  and  dignity,  and  creates  a 
strong,  vital  Germany  that  will  last  forever.”  The  main 
feature  of  the  institution  is,  that  the  element  of  charity  is 
altogether  lacking.  To  the  sickness  insurance  the  worker 
himself  contributes  two-thirds,  the  employer  one-third ; 
while  to  the  invalidity  insurance  both  contribute  equally, 
the  state  adding  a  fixed  amount,  fifty  marks,  in  the  case  of 
each  pension.  Bismarck’s  idea  had  been  to  have  the  state 
bear  the  whole  expense  of  the  insurance  and  thus  make  the 
workers  dependent  on  its  bounty :  a  project  which  had  been 
defeated  after  violent  debates  in  the  Reichstag.  The 
majority  of  the  members  had  felt,  and  rightly,  that  here  was 
a  cardinal  point. 

The  Reichsversicherungsordnung ,  or  Imperial  Insurance 
Ordinance  of  1911,  codified  all  the  previous  legislation  on  the 
subject  in  no  less  than  1805  paragraphs.  It  is  a  wonderful 
monument  to  human  ingenuity,  and  no  constitution  of  a 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  563 

realm  was  ever  drawn  up  with  more  patience  and  care. 
Here,  too,  we  meet  the  thoroughness  of  organization  so  often 
noted.  There  is  a  V ersicherungsamt ,  or  upper  insurance  board, 
for  each  Kreis  or  province,  and  a  Reichsversicherungsamt,  or 
imperial  insurance  board,  to  which  all  disagreements  are 
referred  from  one  or  the  other  of  the  lower  instances.  The 
contributions  to  the  sickness  insurance  are  paid  into  so-called 
Krankenkassen  or  sickness  exchequers  of  which,  previously 
to  1911,  there  were  21,000,  the  number  then  being  reduced 
to  10,000.  To  these  exchequers,  too,  word  is  sent  in  case 
of  sickness,  and  thus  they  become  busy  daily  centres. 
They  have  each  their  own  staff  of  physicians  and  usually 
make  contracts  with  large  city  hospitals  to  keep  a  number  of 
beds  at  their  disposal.  The  Imperial  Ordinance  specifies  for 
all  exchequers  a  minimum  amount  of  benefits  that  they 
must  accord  and  a  maximum  that  they  may  accord  should 
their  finances  permit.  It  is  an  admirably  elastic  system. 
Some  of  the  Krankenkassen  have  many  members  and  are 
rich,  while  others  are  situated  in  poorer  or  less  thickly  settled 
districts.  Formerly  one  was  allowed  to  choose  one’s  ex¬ 
chequer  but  now  one  is  assigned  according  to  fixed  rules. 
The  exchequers,  like  the  labor  bureaus,  are  administered 
on  the  principle  of  self-government,  the  employers  electing 
one-third,  the  workers  two-thirds  of  the  members  of  the 
governing  board  —  a  proportion,  one  sees,  that  is  based  on  the 
relative  amounts  of  the  contributions  to  the  fund. 

It  is  inadvisable  to  go  into  all  the  intricacies  of  the  pay¬ 
ments  and  the  benefits.  Both  are  reckoned  on  the  basis  of 
the  wages  received  and  there  are  five  wage-classes.  The 
normal  or  minimum  benefits  accorded  are  medical  care  for 
a  period  up  to  26  weeks  (after  which  one  is  either  cured  or 
considered  invalid),  all  the  medicines  prescribed,  small 
appliances  such  as  eye  glasses,  trusses,  and  bandages,  and  a 
money  payment  up  to  the  half  of  the  wages  earned.  In  case 

\ 

I' 

t 


“Sick¬ 
ness  ex¬ 
chequers.” 


The 
benefits 
accorded 
by  the 
Kranken¬ 
kassen. 


564 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  acci¬ 
dent  in¬ 
surance. 


of  death  a  fixed  sum  is  allowed  for  funeral  expenses,  a  sum 
equivalent  to  twenty  times  an  ordinary  day’s  wages. 

The  mechanism  of  the  accident  insurance  is  quite  different 
from  that  of  the  sickness  insurance.  Instead  of  the  Kranken- 
kassen  there  are  special  associations  of  employers  called 
Bervfsgenossenschaften,  which  are  more  in  the  nature  of 
banks.  By  an  arrangement  with  the  Krankenkassen  the 
latter  take  care  of  the  patient  for  the  first  thirteen  weeks 
after  the  accident  and  are  then  reimbursed.  By  that  time 
it  is  expected  that  the  full  extent  of  the  injury  will  have 
been  ascertained  and  the  pensions  can  be  estimated  accord¬ 
ingly.  The  Berufsgenossenschaften  have  branch  offices,  544 
in  all,  through  which  the  actual  business  can  be  transacted 
and  the  tendency  is  more  and  more  to  take  charge  of  the  pa¬ 
tient  from  the  beginning.  There  is  no  arbitrary  scale  of 
indemnities,  but  custom  is  gradually  forming  one  —  so  much 
for  an  arm,  so  much  for  an  index  finger,  so  much  for  a  big 
toe.  It  reminds  one  of  the  old  Salic  or  Bavarian  laws  where 
fines  for  acts  of  violence  were  computed  according  to  the 
length  of  the  wound  and  to  the  amount  of  blood  that  spurted 
from  it.  A  workman  who  loses  his  right  arm  would  be 
awarded  a  yearly  sum  equal  to  about  two-thirds  of  his  former 
wages.  A  woman  is  usually  awarded  10  per  cent  more  for 
the  loss  of  a  right  arm  than  would  be  the  case  with  a  man,  for 
it  is  realized  what  a  privation  it  is  to  her  not  to  be  able  to  sew 
and  to  move  about  her  pots  and  kettles.  Disfigurements, 
even  where  the  earning  power  is  not  directly  affected,  are 
well  paid  for,  on  the  ground  that  it  will  be  more  difficult  to 
find  employment.  Altogether  psychology  has  more  to  do 
with  the  matter  than  one  would  expect,  and  here  it  is  that  the 
German  schooling  and  general  bent  of  mind  show  to  the  best 
advantage. 

The  invalidity  and  survivor  insurance  is  organized  on 
still  another  plan.  With  the  aid  of  only  forty-one  organs 


I 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  565 

called  Versicherungsanstalten  and  Bonder anstalten  (thirty-one 
of  the  former  and  ten  of  the  latter),  the  imperial  government 
controls  the  funds.  More  initiative  is  required  of  the  work¬ 
man,  who  must  affix  a  stamp  representing  his  contribution  to 
a  card  that  is  given  him  and  must  also  see  that  his  employer 
does  the  same.  Only  after  200  stamps  have  been  affixed 
does  one  become  eligible  for  an  invalidity  pension,  and 
only  after  1200  have  been  affixed  for  an  old-age  pension. 
The  age  limit  has  been  reduced  during  the  war  from  70 
to  65.  Many  of  these  pensions  lapse  because  of  the  care¬ 
lessness  or  the  poverty  of  the  insured.  The  pensions  are 
small  but  may  be  increased  by  a  system  of  extra  voluntary 
contributions. 

The  Krankenkassen,  with  all  the  daily  calls  upon  them, 
have  little  capital  to  invest,  but  some  of  them  do  build 
their  own  hospitals  and  convalescent  homes.  They  are 
often  very  liberal  to  their  patients,  actually  paying  them  not 
to  return  to  work  too  soon  or  sending  them  to  watering  places 
to  recuperate,  and  also  conducting  an  extensive  campaign 
against  ignorance,  prejudice,  and  superstition  in  the  matter 
of  hygiene.  Their  property  in  1912  was  estimated  to  be 
worth  362,399,600  marks.  The  property  of  the  Versicherungs¬ 
anstalten,  on  the  other  hand,  was  estimated  in  the  same  year 
at  more  than  five  times  that  amount.  The  reason  is  that 
the  demands,  though  large,  come  only  once  in  a  lifetime  for 
each  client  and  that  great  reserves  have  to  be  accumulated. 

The  Versicherungsanstalten,  then,  subject  to  the  oversight 
of  the  Reichversicherungsamt  or  highest  instance  for  the  Em¬ 
pire,  are  able  to  make  enormous  yearly  investments,  and  the 
beauty  of  the  system  here  becomes  apparent.  The  huge 
capital  is  kept  working  for  humanitarian  objects.  It  is 
loaned,  usually  to  city  governments  and  responsible  associa- 

)  tions,  for  specified  purposes.  Up  to  1912  more  than  three 
hundred  million  marks  had  gone  for  the  improvement  of 

i 


Invalidity 
and  sur¬ 
vivor 
insurance. 


Invest¬ 
ment  of 
funds. 


The 

Versich¬ 

erungsan¬ 

stalten. 


i 


566 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The 

Berufsge- 

nossen- 

schaften. 


Objections 
to  com¬ 
pulsory- 
insurance. 


workmen’s  dwellings,  more  than  five  hundred  millions  for 
hospitals,  homes,  and  allied  purposes.  More  than  100  million 
marks  had  been  loaned  for  the  benefit  of  farmers.  Large 
direct  expenditures,  too,  are  made  for  the  purpose  of  staving 
off  invalidity,  —  the  most  striking  item  in  1912  being  the 
purchase  of  false  teeth  for  forty  thousand  clients  at  a  cost  of 
more  than  a  million  marks ! 

The  Berufsgenossenschaften,  too,  spend  large  sums  for  the 
prevention  of  accidents.  They  keep  inspectors  with  a  pay¬ 
roll  totalling  two  million  marks,  whose  duty  is  to  travel  about 
and  see  that  the  safety  regulations  in  factories  and  work¬ 
shops  are  observed.  These  are  trained  and  educated  men, 
and  their  reports  are  often  made  the  basis  of  new  legislation, 
although  they  work  independently  of  the  state  inspectors. 
The  number  of  accidents  has  steadily  decreased,  although 
there  were  more  than  70,000  of  them,  with  5800  deaths,  in 
1911.  The  insurance  has  joined  hands  with  the  Red  Cross 
in  giving  courses  of  instruction  in  first  aid  to  the  injured. 

The  charges  are  made  against  the  compulsory  insurance 
that  it  takes  away  personal  initiative,  induces  simulation  of 
ills,  and  is  unduly  burdensome  on  the  employers.  All  three 
objections  have  some  foundation,  but  as  yet  the  moth  has 
not  eaten  very  far  into  the  garment.  The  institution  is^so 
colossal  that  the  defects  are  scarcely  noticeable.  The 
employers,  after  all,  were  more  prosperous  in  1912  than  ever 
in  the  country’s  history,  though  the  insurance  had  been  in 
force  for  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century.  One  can  give 
many  instances  of  simulation  and  not  have  them  affect  the 
general  perspective.  It  is  perfectly  true  that  a  champion 
wrestler  and  an  aerial  gymnast,  giving  regular  performances, 
were  found  to  be  drawing  pensions,  the  one  for  a  stiff  elbow, 
the  other  for  pain  in  old  wounds.  But  what  does  that 
prove?  There  is  some  leakage  in  every  water  system,  and 
physicians  are  becoming  more  and  more  astute.  By  the 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  567 

wiliest  inventions  they  make  the  deaf  hear,  the  dumb  speak, 
the  blind  see,  and  the  lame  walk.  There  is  another  great 
controlling  agency,  too :  the  average  German  will  protest 
vehemently  if  he  discovers  that  another  is  cheating  the 
treasury  on  which  he  himself  may  one  day  hope  to  call. 
Also  if  the  Berufsgenossenschaften  have  the  least  suspicion  that 
a  client  is  not  playing  fair  they  can  keep  him  under  observa¬ 
tion  and  prosecute  him  for  obtaining  money  under  false 
pretences. 

The  social  insurance  is  not  compulsory  for  those  who  can 
prove  that  their  future  is  provided  for  in  some  other  way. 
Thus  postal  and  railroad  as  well  as  municipal  officials  are 
exempt.  Their  wages  are  paid  even  in  case  of  illness,  or 
else  they  draw  the  equivalent  from  special  insurance  funds. 
Like  the  Versicherungsanstalten  the  pension  exchequer  of 
the  Prussian  state  railroads  has  considerable  sums  to  invest. 
Up  to  1911  it  had  advanced  to  building  associations  for  the 
improvement  of  dwellings  for  its  employees  no  less  than 
24  million  marks.  Workmen  who  have  not  attained  the 
rank  of  officials  must  still  insure  with  the  national  insurance ; 
but  in  1904  the  railroad  organized  a  sickness  exchequer  so 
designed  that  the  combined  benefits  from  both  sources  will 
equal  the  regular  wages.  In  many  small  ways,  too,  the  rail¬ 
road  contributes  directly  to  the  welfare  of  its  people  —  so 
much  for  day  nurseries,  so  much  for  sport  and  gymnastics 
among  the  apprentices,  so  much  to  individuals  for  long  and 
faithful  service,  so  much  as  extra  aid  to  needy  workmen. 
This  last  item  alone  amounted  in  1911  to  more  than  two 
million  marks.  There  are  items,  too,  of  20,000  marks  for 
bees,  and  16,500  marks  for  goats  and  rabbits,  that  show  the 
spirit  that  guides  the  whole.  The  keeping  of  bees,  goats,  and 
rabbits  helps  the  workers  to  eke  out  their  wages,  which  are 
very  moderate.  But  as  a  result  of  all  the  benefits  and  of  the 
certainty  that  their  families  will  be  provided  for  in  case  of 


Social 
work  of 
the  rail¬ 
roads. 


568 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Post- 

office 

social 

work. 


City 

officials. 


accident,  the  service  in  the  Prussian  railroads  is  exceedingly 
popular. 

The  imperial  post-office  treats  its  employees  in  exactly  the 
same  way.  There  are  items  in  the  budget  for  1914  of  30,700,- 
000  marks  for  pensions,  of  4,444,500  marks  for  aid  and  assist¬ 
ance  of  various  kinds,  of  690,000  marks  for  extra  gifts  to 
pensioners  or  their  survivors.  Ten  million  marks  have 
already  been  spent  in  improving  housing  conditions  for 
employees;  special  care  is  taken  in  providing  boarding 
places  for  the  younger  men,  where  they  will  be  kept  away 
from  evil  influences,  and  especially  for  the  young  women 
who  are  employed  as  telephone  operators.  One  instance 
must  suffice  of  the  liberal  spirit  which  animates  the  post- 
office :  since  1909  officials  who  have  fallen  into  the  drink 
habit  but  are  not  considered  incurable  are  placed  in  some 
institution,  given  a  year’s  leave  of  absence  with  full  salary, 
and  a  substitute  is  provided  for  them.  In  the  buildings  and 
workrooms  everything  is  done  to  make  the  surroundings 
safe  and  hygienic,  and  every  precaution  is  taken  against 
accidents  on  trains  and  other  conveyances.  Curiously 
enough  a  postal  official  is  more  exposed  to  accidents  on  the 
Prussian  railroads  than  are  ordinary  passengers.  There 
is  a  regulation  that  the  car  next  to  the  locomotive  shall  carry 
no  travellers,  but  that  “  railroad  and  postal  officials  on  duty 
as  well  as  persons  accompanying  corpses  and  animals  shall 
not  be  rated  as  travellers.” 

The  German  cities  treat  their  officials  and  their  workmen 
much  as  do  the  post-office  and  the  railroads,  but  there  is  of 
course  much  less  unity  in  the  matter.  The  wages  and  salaries 
differ  greatly  in  amount  according  to  the  local  customs. 
Crefeld  raises  the  pay  as  the  family  increases;  Diisseldorf 
after  a  certain  number  of  years  of  service  allows  a  yearly 
vacation  without  loss  of  pay,  and  also  gives  “ honorary  gifts” 
for  25  and  again  for  40  years  of  service.  Cities  frequently 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  569 


build  houses  for  their  officials.  Since  the  entry  of  the  cities 
into  the  industrial  field  a  whole  new  class  of  technically 
trained  employees  has  come  in  and,  relatively  speaking,  they 
are  highly  paid,  as  skill  and  regularity  are  absolutely  essen¬ 
tial.  Indeed  it  is  so  common  to  have  employees  make 
valuable  discoveries  and  inventions  that  the  question  as  to 
whom  the  patents  belong  has  become  a  burning  one.  Diissel- 
dorf  and  Konigsberg  go  to  the  extreme  of  claiming  the  full 
ownership  of  all  patents  taken  out  for  inventions  of  men 
working  in  their  service. 

These  city  industries  are  of  the  most  varied  kind.  Almost 
every  German  city  of  any  size  owns  its  waterworks  and 
many  make  them  pay  a  good  rate  of  interest,  Hamburg  and 
Cologne  between  9  and  10  per  cent.  Very  many  communi¬ 
ties  own  their  electric  plants,  Berlin  having  acquired  hers 
since  the  war  broke  out ;  and  the  profits,  as  is  the  case  with 
Frankfort,  sometimes  rise  into  the  millions.  The  ownership 
of  gas-works  is  less  common  on  account  of  long-term  con¬ 
tracts  that  have  still  to  expire.  In  1910-11  out  of  407  gas¬ 
works  only  64  per  cent  were  municipally  owned.  But  with 
the  new  processes  and  the  new  uses  of  gas  municipal  owner¬ 
ship  of  that  product,  too,  is  extending  rapidly.  Berlin’s  clear 
profit  from  its  gas-works  in  1911  was  13,633,572  marks. 
The  city  has  introduced  automatic  metres  on  the  penny-in- 
the-slot  principle  for  the  poorer  classes.  Gas  is  in  very 
common  use,  too,  for  cooking.  Some  of  the  cities  have  made 
a  regular  propaganda  for  Koche  mit  gas,  while  new  inventions 
in  the  way  of  burners  have  made  gas  a  successful  rival  even 
of  electricity  in  the  matter  of  street  lighting.  The  utiliza¬ 
tion  of  by-products,  too,  like  coke,  tar,  ammonia,  etc.,  has 
helped  to  make  the  gas-plants  profitable. 

Municipal  tramways  have  on  the  whole  not  proved 
profitable  enterprises  in  Germany,  as  nearly  half  the  cities 
have  to  assist  in  making  up  deficits.  But  one  would  fail  to 


City-run 

industries. 


Gas¬ 

works. 


Municipal 

tramways. 


570 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


The  pur¬ 
pose  of 
municipal 
industries. 


Various 

city-run 

industries. 


appreciate  the  German  conception  of  municipal  ownership 
were  one  to  attach  much  significance  to  this  showing.  The 
moment  there  is  a  surplus  in  tramway  earnings  there  is  a 
clamor  to  have  the  fares  cut  down.  The  service  is  excellent 
and  yet  the  fares  are  absurdly  low ;  in  almost  any  town  one 
can  travel  a  considerable  distance  for  ten  Pfennige,  or  two 
and  a  half  cents.  There  are  still  further  reductions  for  work¬ 
men  and  school  children. 

It  is  safe  to  say  that  the  purpose  behind  German  municipal 
industrial  enterprise  is  never  profit  pure  and  simple,  and  that 
the  cities  are  ready  to  pocket  the  loss  if  there  are  other 
advantages  to  compensate.  Thus  Diisseldorf  runs  a  great 
concert  hall  combined  with  a  municipal  wine  business  and 
there  is  always  a  yearly  deficit.  But  the  people  get  their 
wine  of  guaranteed  quality;  concerts  of  the  best  music  are 
given  at  frequent  intervals,  not  to  speak  of  innumerable 
lectures;  and  the  city  has  splendid  facilities  for  honoring 
guests  or  holding  other  functions.  Almost  every  city  with  a 
municipal  theatre  or  opera  house  has  to  subsidize  liberally,  — 
Frankfort  up  to  400,000  marks  a  year ;  but  the  purpose  is  con¬ 
sidered  an  educational  one  and  there  is  little  murmuring  on 
the  part  of  any  one.  The  actual  staging  of  the  performances 
is  usually  handed  over  to  an  impresario  who  risks  his  own 
funds  in  the  undertaking ;  but  the  cities,  in  return  for  their 
aid,  make  their  own  stipulations.  Diisseldorf,  for  instance, 
requires  that  no  new  chorus  girl  more  than  thirty-five  years 
of  age  shall  be  engaged,  and  also  reserves  the  right  to  enter 
an  objection  to  any  special  singer,  actor  or  ballet  dancer. 

The  benefit  of  the  people  as  a  whole  —  that  is  the  purpose 
behind  every  German  municipal  industrial  enterprise.  A 
city  that  does  nothing  in  this  way  is  not  considered  progres¬ 
sive.  No  less  than  425  towns  now  have  their  own  slaughter¬ 
houses  and  cattle  yards,  the  main  object  of  which  is  to  make 
thorough  inspection  possible.  The  city  of  Munich  has  its 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  571 


asphalt  factory  that  utilizes  all  the  waste  from  torn-up 
streets.  There  are  small  communities  that  exploit  their 
communal  forests  to  such  good  effect  that  their  people  are 
subject  to  little  or  no  taxation.  One  town,  Langenaubach 
in  Baden,  which  owns  valuable  chalk-pits  in  addition  to  its 
forests,  not  only  demands  neither  taxes  nor  water-rates, 
but  lays  by  money  every  year.  This  town  sells  peat, 
another  sand  or  gravel.  More  than  100  towns  have  their 
own  inns  or  restaurants,  twenty-three  their  own  grain-mills, 
forty-five  their  own  brick-yards.  Diisseldorf  does  its  own 
banking,  Mannheim  has  lately  gone  into  the  milk  business. 
Munich,  for  the  benefit  of  its  taxpayers,  has  for  years  con¬ 
ducted  experiments  with  the  divining-rod  in  the  effort  to 
locate  leaks  in  the  water-pipes  and  save  the  tearing  up  of 
the  streets. 

Doubtless  the  most  profitable  and  at  the  same  time  the 
most  utilitarian  of  all  the  enterprises  is  the  real  estate  busi¬ 
ness  that  cities  carry  on.  Frankfort  sold  land  in  1912  to 
the  value  of  3J  million  marks,  not  to  speak  of  several  prof¬ 
itable  exchanges.  Aix-la-Chapelle,  between  1898  and  1908, 
bought  275  acres  at  two  marks  a  square  yard  and  sold 


i 


sixty-eight  acres  at  17  marks  a  square  yard,  making  a  profit  of 
more  than  two  million  and  being  left  with  200  acres  besides. 
The  general  procedure  is  to  buy  great  tracts  of  unimproved 
land,  reserve  all  that  could  possibly  be  needed  for  public  pur¬ 
poses,  and  sell  the  rest  at  an  advance.  The  most  interesting 
municipal  land  experiment  is  that  of  Ulm.  A  consistent  policy 
of  purchasing  has  been  pursued  until  now  the  city  owns  five- 
sixths  of  all  its  area.  It  builds  houses  for  persons  of  moderate 
means  and  allows  them  to  pay  on  the  amortization  plan. 
The  yearly  payments  are  little  if  any  in  excess  of  the  cus¬ 
tomary  rental  for  less  desirable  quarters.  The  scheme  is 
very  popular,  and  the  houses,  which  are  of  good  architecture 
and  well  built,  are  in  great  demand.  There  are  other  systems 


City  real 

estate 

dealings. 


572 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Increase 
of  area. 


Improved 

housing 

conditions. 


where,  as  in  the  English  leasehold,  the  land  reverts  to  the 
town  after  a  long  term  of  years.  The  constant  aim  is  to 
prevent  speculation  and  consequent  inflation  of  land  prices. 
The  city  helps  its  poorer  purchasers  by  making  the  terms  of 
payment  as  convenient  as  possible ;  also  by  charging  cheap 
rates  for  water  and  gas. 

The  lucrativeness  of  land  deals  is  one  of  the  considera¬ 
tions  that  have  led  German  cities,  by  amalgamation 
with  surrounding  villages,  to  increase  their  territory  enor¬ 
mously.  Miilheim  in  1905  incorporated  six  times  as  much 
land  as  that  contained  within  its  former  limits;  Gelsen¬ 
kirchen  in  1903  increased  its  territory  by  1076  per  cent! 
Frankfort  between  1910  and  1914  was  the  largest  city,  in 
area,  in  Germany,  being  more  like  a  small  kingdom ;  but 
Berlin,  since  a  recent  large  purchase  of  woodland  from  the 
state,  probably  surpasses  her.  All  the  large  towns  are  follow¬ 
ing  suit  in  thus  increasing  their  holdings.  Cities  owning 
their  own  tramways  are  in  the  fortunate  position  of  being  able 
to  contribute  to  the  development  of  the  new  districts  by  ex¬ 
tending  the  lines ;  and,  of  course,  the  municipal  gas  and 
electric  works  are  glad  to  find  new  customers. 

A  general  movement  for  improving  housing  conditions 
has  been  going  on  of  late  in  German  cities.  Many,  like 
Cologne,  are  cutting  great  boulevards  through  their  most 
congested  districts  so  as  to  let  in  light  and  air.  Investiga¬ 
tions  have  been  made  into  the  living  conditions  of  families, 
the  most  elaborate  one  being  that  of  Munich,  which  was 
undertaken  at  a  cost  of  130,000  marks.  Many  cities  now 
have  regular  inspectors  of  housing  conditions ;  and  in 
Frankfort  even  the  houses  of  the  rich  are  inspected  to  see 
if  suitable  provision  is  made  for  the  servants.  A  very  en¬ 
lightened,  unbureaucratic  spirit  is  at  work,  for  it  is  realized 
that  legislation  and  the  strict  enforcement  of  laws  alone  will 
not  do  everything  to  remedy  matters.  Families  choose 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  573 


narrow  unhygienic  quarters  mainly  because  they  can  find 
nothing  else  for  their  money ;  and  simply  ejecting  them  with¬ 
out  providing  something  better  does  not  solve  the  problem. 
Frequently  the  inspectors  can  improve  matters  by  inducing 
the  landlords  to  make  alterations  or  the  families  to  take  in 
fewer  lodgers.  There  are  now  city-owned  interim  lodging- 
houses  for  families  that  have  been  ordered  to  move.  The 
cities  keep  close  watch  on  the  real  estate  market  and  when 
there  is  a  dearth  of  small  dwellings  or  apartments  step  in 
with  their  whole  influence.  Munich,  between  1909  and  1913, 
herself  expended  ten  million  marks  in  the  cause.  The  cities 
have  regular  loan  departments,  the  transactions  of  which 
often  assume  enormous  dimensions.  These  departments 
often  make  a  practice  of  loaning  on  second  mortgages  that 
would  not  be  easy  to  float  among  private  investors. 

In  order  to  provide  for  the  young  men  who  make  a  large  Bachelors’ 
proportion  of  those  lodgers  that  help  to  overcrowd  tenements,  tomes, 
cities  have  opened  Ledigenheime,  or  bachelors  ’  homes.  Char- 
lottenburg  has  a  fine  large  building  erected  by  a  stock  com¬ 
pany,  but  with  financial  aid  and  guarantee  from  the  city 
which  has  also  given  the  land  on  a  long  lease.  There  are 
three  hundred  and  forty  rooms  with  a  large  general  gathering 
room.  Housed  in  the  same  building  are  a  public  bath  es¬ 
tablishment,  a  restaurant,  a  branch  of  the  public  library 
with  its  own  reading  room,  and  a  roof-garden  where  in 
summer  food  is  served.  The  rent  of  a  room,  including 
heating,  lighting,  and  breakfast,  ranges  from  ten  to  fifteen 
marks  a  month ! 

Cities  encourage  thrift  by  maintaining  municipal  savings  Municipal 
banks,  the  activities  of  which  are  extended  in  all  directions,  savings 
Even  the  schools  act  as  feeders,  the  children  contributing  banks* 
not  inconsiderable  sums.  The  total  deposits  in  public  savings 
banks  at  the  beginning  of  1912  amounted  to  seventeen 
billion  marks,  as  opposed  to  only  one  billion  300  million  in 


574 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


City 

pawn¬ 

shops. 


Miscel¬ 

laneous 

welfare 

work. 


private  institutions.  It  has  long  been  the  custom,  too, 
for  German  cities  to  run  pawnshops,  which  very  properly 
go  by  the  name  of  “loan  establishments  and  are  run  on 
the  same  strict  principles  as  banks,  but  without  expectation 
of  profit.  The  intention  is  to  keep  the  people  out  of  the  hands 
of  usurers  and  relieve  distress  by  affording  a  convenient 
means  of  raising  money.  And  the  institution  is  made  use 
of  to  the  fullest  extent.  Munich,  for  instance,  in  1912  lent 
money  on  545,697  objects,  besides  continuing  in  pawn  172,643 
objects  from  the  previous  year.  This  makes  an  average  of 
one  article  pawned  for  each  man,  woman,  and  child  in  the 
city !  Payments  are  made  almost  to  the  full  value  of  the  ob¬ 
jects  ;  and  if  an  appraiser  make  a  mistake  in  valuation  he  has 
to  pay  the  difference.  The  number  of  articles  redeemed  is 
large,  —  434,407  in  Munich  in  1912  —  while  in  many  cases 
the  pawnshop  is  used  merely  as  the  grave  of  objects  no  longer 
desired.  The  loans  vary  from  a  mark  or  two  to  many 
thousands,  and  there  is  scarcely  a  conceivable  article  that  is 

refused. 

The  pawnshops  are  but  one  homely  illustration  of  the  way 
in  which  the  cities  try  to  promote  the  well-being  and  happi¬ 
ness  of  their  inhabitants.  We  have  already  in  this  chapter 
treated  of  many  other  ways  in  which  the  same  endeavor  is 
shown.  The  subject  is  inexhaustible.  One  would  gladly 
dwell  on  the  means  that  are  taken  to  insure  good,  honest  and 
faithful  government,  on  the  spirit  of  devotion  that  inspires 
the  citizens ;  to  show  how  mistaken  is  the  view  that  all  the 
paternalism  destroys  private  initiative.  In  Frankfort  alone 
there  are  four  hundred  different  private  funds  or  organizations 
for  charitable  work,  functioning,  however,  in  the  strictest 
cooperation  with  the  city.  One  central  charity  organiza¬ 
tion  holds  together  the  whole  fabric ;  the  city  is  mapped  into 
districts  and  young  men  have  to  do  charity  work  in  their 
district  just  as  they  have  to  do  jury  duty,  with  a  penalty  for 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  575 


refusal  or  neglect.  This  is  in  keeping  with  the  whole  manner 
of  looking  upon  civic  duties.  Even  the  men  highest  in  the 
city’s  service,  the  Ratsherren,  or  Councillors,  are  punished 
by  the  trebling  of  their  taxes  if  they  refuse  to  serve  when 
elected.  One  would  like  to  dwell,  too,  on  what  the  German 
cities  do  to  improve  the  public  taste  through  the  museums 
and  the  expositions.  In  the  matter  of  art  this  theme  needs  no 
elaboration.  In  the  matter  of  industry  it  is  not  so  familiar. 
A  report  of  one  of  our  own  teachers’  colleges  declares  that 
the  industrial  museum  at  Stuttgart  is  worth  a  journey  half 
round  the  world  to  see.  Here,  in  addition  to  countless  ob¬ 
jects  to  be  admired,  one  finds  a  whole  suite  of  rooms  full  of 
deterrent  examples,  —  of  articles  made  as  they  should  not  be 
made.  The  Deutsches  Museum  at  Munich  already  holds 
within  its  four  walls  more  objects  of  interest  for  practi¬ 
cal  and  scientific  men  than  any  other  single  building  in  the 
world,  and  a  magnificent  new  building  enabling  the  museum 
greatly  to  enlarge  its  scope  was  nearing  completion  when  the 
war  broke  out.  Another  form  of  museum  is  the  Arbeiter- 
Museum,  which  shows  safety  appliances  and  illustrates  the 
dangers  of  carelessness  and  of  unhygienic  living  in  a  realistic 
way  by  the  aid  of  wax  models.  There  are  hygienic  con¬ 
gresses,  too,  that  spread  broadcast  the  knowledge  of  sani¬ 
tation.  Expositions  along  special  lines  have  latterly  become 
popular:  one  at  Dusseldorf  dealing  with  “Woman,”  one  at 
Breslau  dealing  with  “the  Child,”  one  at  Leipzig  dealing 
with  “the  Book” ;  while  the  Werkbundaustellung  in  Cologne, 
in  progress  when  the  war  broke  out,  aimed  at  beautifying  all 
manufactured  products,  and  making  them  better  adapted 
to  their  purpose. 

The  improvement  in  German  city  hospitals  is  another 
subject  on  which  one  would  gladly  dwell.  The  poorest 
sufferers  to-day  may  have  comforts  of  which  the  richest 
king  never  dreamt  a  century  or  two  ago.  These  great 


Industrial 

museums. 


Work¬ 

men’s 

museums. 


City 

hospitals. 


576 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


Care  of 
the  insane. 


Cities  in 
the  under 
taking 
business. 


clean  palaces,  in  which  the  very  air  is  washed  before  it  passes 
through  the  rooms,  and  where  the  soft-footed  attendants 
are  summoned  by  flash-lights  instead  of  by  bells,  fill  the 
visitor  with  wonder. 

More  and  more  the  German  cities  are  taking  care  of  their 
own  insane.  The  capital  invested  in  Berlin’s  asylums 
amounts  to  almost  50  million  marks.  The  fourth  great 
building  was  to  have  been  completed  in  1915,  and  it  was 
expected  that  henceforth  very  few  patients  would  be  sent 
to  private  institutions.  In  1869  the  city  took  care  of  but 
500  cases ;  the  yearly  average  is  now  8500.  The  population 
has  trebled,  to  be  sure,  but  the  number  of  patients  has  in¬ 
creased  manyfold ;  a  result  partly  due  to  the  fact  that  many 
more  cases  were  formerly  treated  at  home.  Since  1911 
Berlin  runs  an  advisory  bureau,  or  Beiratstelle,  for  keeping  in 
touch  with  discharged  patients  and,  if  possible,  preventing 
relapses. 

We  have  touched,  often  lightly  enough,  on  almost  every 
field  in  which  a  German  city  is  of  use  to  its  people,  —  safe¬ 
guarding  them  in  infancy,  training  them  in  youth,  lightening 
the  burdens  of  married  life,  alleviating  pain  and  sickness, 
making  the  world  a  better  place  in  which  to  live.  Cities 
will  now  perform  even  the  last  sad  services  that  are  apt  to 
be  needed.  They  own  their  own  graveyards  and  crema¬ 
tories  and  act  as  their  own  undertakers.  In  Frankfort  95 
per  cent  of  the  funerals  start  from  the  city’s  receiving  vaults. 
The  whole  undertaking  business  is  a  city  monopoly,  and  it  is 
against  the  law  for  any  other  corporation  or  for  any  person 
to  transport  a  corpse  through  the  streets,  or  to  lower  it  into 
the  grave.  The  city  will  attend  to  every  detail  at  a  fixed 
tariff :  will  send  a  Leichenfrau  or  corpse-woman  to  make  the 
body  presentable;  will  furnish  the  coffin  and  see  that  the 
body  is  laid  in  it ;  will  arrange  for  the  religious  ceremonies 
and  see  that  the  announcement  is  inserted  in  the  newspapers. 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS  BETWEEN  1871  AND  1914  577 


Possibly  nothing  better  illustrates  the  benevolent  des¬ 
potism  of  German  municipal  governments  than  the  way  in 
which  these  Frankfort  funeral  charges  are  estimated.  The 
fees  are  graded  according  to  the  income  of  the  head  of  the 
family.  With  an  income  under  1500  marks  the  funeral 
charges,  including  the  coffin,  will  amount  to  thirty  marks ; 
and  even  this  will  be  reduced  by  one-half  if  the  head  of  the 
family  have  no  capital  or  property  and  have  three  people  to 
support.  The  prices  ascend  by  classes  until,  with  an  in¬ 
come  of  7500  marks  or  over,  one  pays  150  marks.  Again, 
the  age  of  the  deceased  is  the  basis  of  another  scale.  All 
charges  for  a  still-birth  come  to  two  marks,  for  a  child  a 
few  weeks  old,  to  five  marks ;  for  a  child  up  to  four  years  old, 
from  twelve  to  seventy  marks ;  for  one  between  five  and 
fifteen  from  20  to  100  marks.  Single  graves  are  cheap  but  in 
a  row  and  must  be  vacated  after  twelve  years;  but  in  1912 
no  less  than  313  so-called  family  graves  were  sold,  for  200 
marks  apiece.  A  family  grave  may  contain  two  persons 
imposed  one  upon  the  other  and  will  be  safe  from  disturbance 
for  thirty  years.  The  200  marks  includes  a  monument  un¬ 
less  one  be  desired  of  a  special  size. 

The  idea  beneath  all  this  is  to  spare  bereaved  families 
care  and  expense  at  a  moment  when  they  are  apt  to  be  off 
their  guard  and  incur  indebtedness  that  may  seriously  hamper 
them  later.  For  that  reason  it  is  felt  that  the  schedules  must 
be  made  as  clear  and  definite  as  possible.  And  where  all 
are  treated  alike  there  need  be  no  concessions  to  fashion  or 
custom.  All  honor  to  the  Frankfort  burial  system ! 

Cremation  is  making  great  strides  in  Germany,  after 
having  been  kept  back  for  years  by  the  insensate  opposition 
of  the  clergy.  Until  recently,  in  Prussia,  no  ceremony 
might  be  performed  over  a  corpse  that  was  to  be  cremated. 
All  legislation  on  the  subject  was  opposed,  and  even  that 
which  finally  went  through  had  to  be  in  the  nature  of  a  com- 
vol.  ii  —  2p 


Funeral 

fees. 


The 

thought 
under¬ 
neath  the 
Frankfort 
system. 


Crema¬ 

tion. 


57§  A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 

P  « 

promise.  No  one  can  be  cremated  who  has  not  during  his 
lifetime,  in  his  will  or  in  a  document  sworn  to  before  a  notary, 
given  notice  of  his  desire  and  intention.  Even  then,  unless 
the  exact  formula  has  been  observed,  the  declaration  is  in¬ 
valid.  It  is  said  that  a  boy  under  sixteen  may  not  be 
cremated  in  any  case,  as  he  is  not  old  enough  to  draw  up 
a  will  or  take  an  oath.  The  opposition  has  seen  to  it,  too, 
that  the  charges  for  cremation  are  higher  than  those  for 
burial.  All  the  same,  between  forty  and  fifty  German  cities 
now  have  their  crematories;  some  of  them,  like  the  one  at 
Dresden,  of  great  architectural  beauty.  Dresden  has  a 
tariff  of  eighteen  different  classes,  the  charges  varying  accord¬ 
ing  to  the  character  and  placing  of  the  urn.  In  Frankfort  the 
expense  of  cremation  averages  22  marks  more  than  that  for 
burial. 

A  powerful  society  now  makes  propaganda  for  the  crema¬ 
tion  cause,  and  its  strongest  arguments  are  the  ever  increasing 
area  that  cities  require  for  cemetery  purposes  and  the  fre¬ 
quency  with  which  graveyards  must  be  disturbed  in  order 
to  make  room  for  improvements. — The  showing  is  indeed 
appalling  and  helps  to  strengthen  the  feeling  that  the  future 
^ofjthejjties  should  be  for  the  living  and  not  for  the  dead.' 

Germany  hasjtaught  us  this  truth  as  well  as  mairv~btEer 
v  truths~of  social  progress^- 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE1 

A.D. 

1658-1705  Leopold  1. :  The  rise  of  the  Prussian  mon¬ 
archy, —  early  margraves;  acceptance  of  the 
Reformation  in  Brandenburg ;  the  Cleves  heri¬ 
tage  (1614);  John  Sigismund  becomes  a  Cal¬ 
vinist  (1612);  the  Thirty  Years’  War;  the 
accession  of  the  Great  Elector  (1640-1688); 
Prussia  and  Brandenburg  united  (1618);  the 
Great  Elector  takes  part  in  Swedish-Polish  war 
(1655-1660);  the  battle  of  Warsaw  (1656);  the 
Peace  of  Oliva  (1660);  subjugation  of  the 
Prussian  estates  (1660-1662)  :  the  Great  Elector 
and  Louis  XI  V.  —  the  Diet  of  Ratisbon  becomes 
perpetual  (1663) ;  wars  of  the  empire  with  the 
Turks  (1663-1699) ;  battle  of  St.  Gothard  (1664) ; 
devolution  war  of  Louis  XIV.  (1667-1668); 
second  war  of  Louis  XIV.  against  Holland 
(1672-1679);  the  Great  Elector  conquers  the 
Swedes  at  Fehrbellin  (1675) ;  rebellion  in  Hun¬ 
gary  under  Emmerich  Tbkoly  (1678-1687); 
Peace  of  Nymwegen  (1679);  Peace  of  St.  Ger- 
main-en-Laye,  by  which  the  Great  Elector  gives 
back  Hither  Pomerania  to  Sweden  (1679); 
Maximilian  II.,  Emmanuel,  elector  of  Bavaria 
(1679-1726),  exiled  (1705-1715);  the  “Re¬ 
unions”  of  Louis  XIV.  (1680);  Louis  XIV. 
takes  Strassburg  (1681);  siege  of  Vienna  by 
the  Turks  (1683);  revocation  of  the  Edict  of 
Nantes  (1685);  William  of  Orange  becomes 
King  of  England  (1688)  ;  Frederick  III.,  elector 

1  This  table  contains  some  facts  that  are  not  in  the  text. 

679 


580 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


A.D. 

of  Brandenburg  (afterward  King  Frederick  I.) 
(1688-1701);  warwith  Louis  XIV. (1688-1697); 
devastation  of  the  Palatinate  (1688);  Peter  the 
Great,  Czar  of  Russia  (1689-1725);  Prince 
Eugene  conquers  the  Turks  at  Slankamen 
(1691) ;  ninth  electorate  formed  for  Hanover 
(1692) ;  Augustus  the  Strong,  of  Saxony,  be¬ 
comes  king  of  Poland  (1697) ;  Peace  of  Carlo- 
witz  with  the  Turks  (1699) ;  the  great  Northern 
war  (1700-1721);  Prussia  made  a  kingdom 
under  Frederick  I.  (1701) ; 1  the  Spanish  Succes¬ 
sion  War  (1701-1714);  the  battle  of  Blenheim 
(1704). 

1705-1711  Joseph  I.:  Charles  XII.  of  Sweden  invades 
Saxony  (1706)  ;  Peace  of  Alt-Ranstadt  (1706)  ; 
quarrel  of  Joseph  with  Pope  Clement  XI.  (1707)  ; 
siege  of  Lille  and  battle  of  Oudenarde  (1708); 
battle  of  Malplaquet  (1709). 

1711-1740  Charles  VI.:  Peace  treaties  of  Utrecht,  Ras- 
tadt,  and  Baden  end  the  War  of  the  Spanish 
Succession  (1713-1714);  Prussia  acquires  Neu- 
enburg  (Neufchatel),  Mors,  and  Lingen,  and  a 
portion  of  Guelders ;  George  I.  of  Hanover 
becomes  king  of  England  (1714)  ;  Louis  XV.  of 
France  (1715-1774) ;  Peace  treaties  of  Stock¬ 
holm  and  Nystadt  end  the  great  northern  war 

1  A  list  of  the  kings  and  queens  of  Prussia :  — 

Frederick  I.  and  Sophie  Charlotte  of  Hanover  (1701-1713). 

Frederick  William  I.  and  Sophie  Dorothea  of  Hanover  (1713— 
1740). 

Frederick  II.  (the  Great)  and  Elizabeth  Christine  of  Bruns¬ 
wick  (1740-1786). 

Frederick  William  II.  and  Frederika  Louisa  of  Hesse-Darm- 
stadt  (1786-1797). 

Frederick  William  III.  and  Louise  of  Mecklenburg  (1797— 
1840). 

Frederick  William  IV.  and  Elizabeth  of  Bavaria  (1840-1861). 

William  I.  and  Augusta  of  Baden  (1861-1888). 

Frederick  III.  and  Victoria  of  England  (1888). 

William  II.  and  Victoria  of  Schleswig-Holstein  (1888-  ). 


PAGE 


1-74 

74-82 


29-43 

87-122 

122-218 

226-245 

245-340 

340-379 

379-449 


A.D. 


1740-1780 


1742-1745 


1745-1806 

1745-1765 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE 

(1720-1721) ;  Pragmatic  Sanction  of  Charles 
VI. ;  George  II.  of  England  (1727-1760)  ;  Peace 
of  Belgrade  (1739) ;  Reforms  in  Prussia  insti¬ 
tuted  by  Frederick  William  I.;  the  Salzburg 
Protestants  (1731) ;  Prussia  intrigued  against 
by  Austria ;  the  double-marriage  project ;  treat¬ 
ment  of  his  son  by  Frederick  William  I. ;  the 
attempt  at  flight  (1730)  ;  marriage  of  Frederick 
of  Prussia  (1733)  ;  hatred  of  Austria. 

Maria  Theresa,  Queen  of  Hungary  and  Arch¬ 
duchess  of  Austria ;  first  Silesian  war  with 
Frederick  the  Great  (1740-1742) ;  battle  of 
Mollwitz  (1741) ;  battle  of  Chotusitz  (1742) ; 
Peace  of  Breslau  (1742) ;  Austrian  Succession 
War  (1741-1748)  ;  Elizabeth,  Czarina  of  Russia 
(1741-1762). 

Charles  VII.  of  Bavaria,  emperor  under  the 
auspices  of  Frederick  the  Great ;  East  Friesland 
falls  to  Prussia  (1744) ;  second  Silesian  war 
(1744-1745) ;  battles  of  Hohenfriedberg,  Soor, 
Kesselsdorf;  Peace  of  Dresden  (1745);  Treaty 
of  Fiissen  between  Austria  and  Bavaria  (1745)  ; 
Charles  Frederick,  Margrave  of  Baden  —  after 
1803  elector,  and  after  1806  grand  duke  (1746- 
1811). 

Emperors  of  the  Lorraine-Hapsburg 
Line. 

Francis  I. :  Peace  of  Aix-la-Chapelle  (1748)  ; 
the  Convention  of  Westminster  (1755);  first 
Treaty  of  Versailles  (1755)  ;  the  Seven  Years’ 
War  (1756-1763);  battles  of  Lobositz  and 
Pirna  (1756) ;  battles  of  Prague,  Kolin,  Ross- 
bach,  and  Leuthen  (1757)  ;  battles  of  Zorndorf, 
Hochkirch,  Crefeld  (1758)  ;  battles  of  Kiiners- 
dorf,  Maxen,  and  Minden  (1759) ;  battles  of 
Liegnitz  and  Torgau  (1760) ;  camp  of  Bunzel- 
witz  (1761) ;  Treaty  with  Peter  III.  of  Russia 
(1762);  Catherine  II.  of  Russia  (1762-1796); 
battle  of  Burkersdorf  (1762) ;  Peace  of  Huberts- 
burg  (1763);  Stanislaus  Poniatowski,  king  of 


581 

PAGE 


82-122 


122-138 


138-145 


582 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


A.D. 


1765-1790 


1790-1792 


1792-1806 


Poland  (1764-1795);  Frederick  the  Great  in 
time  of  peace ;  relations  with  Voltaire  (1694- 
1778)  and  other  literary  and  learned  men ;  ad¬ 
ministrative  reforms. 

Joseph  II. :  Prussia  recovers  from  the  Seven 
Years’  War ;  the  first  partition  of  Poland  (1772); 
Frederick  Augustus  III.,  elector  of  Saxony, 
king  after  1806  (1763-1827);  dissolution  of  the 
Jesuit  order  (1773);  Charles  Augustus,  Grand 
Duke  of  Weimar  and  patron  of  Goethe  (1775- 
1828);  Bavarian  Succession  War  (1778-1779); 
Peace  of  Teschen  (1779);  Kant’s  Critique  of 
Pure  Reason  (1781);  The  Furstenbund  (1785) ; 
death  of  Frederick  the  Great  (1786)  ;  condition 
of  Germany  at  the  beginning  of  the  French 
Revolution  (1789) ;  decline  of  Prussia  under 
Frederick  William  II.  (1786-1797);  initial 
effects  of  the  French  Revolution. 

Leopold  II.:  Convention  of  Reichenbach  be¬ 
tween  Austria  and  Prussia  (1790);  Ansbach- 
Baireuth  falls  to  Prussia  (1791) ;  outbreak  of 
the  war  of  Austria  and  Prussia  against  France ; 
declaration  of  Pillnitz  (1792);  battle  of  Valmy 
(1792) ;  Jemappes  (1792). 

Francis  II. :  Execution  of  Louis  XVI. 
(1793);  first  coalition  war  against  France 
(1793-1797)  ;  second  partition  of  Poland  (1793) ; 
Peace  of  Basel  between  Prussia  and  France 
(1795);  the  third  partition  of  Poland  (1795); 
Paul  I.,  emperor  of  Russia  (1796-1801);  Peace 
of  Campo  Formio  (1797) ;  Frederick  II.,  duke  of 
Wiirtemberg  —  king  after  1805  (1797-1816); 
Frederick  William  III.,  king  of  Prussia  (1797- 
1840);  Congress  of  Rastadt  (1798);  second 
coalition  war  against  France  (1798-1802); 
Maximilian  IV.  Joseph  of  Bavaria  —  king  after 
1805  (1799-1825);  victories  of  Napoleon — First 
Consul  after  1799  —  in  Italy  (1800);  Peace  of 
Luneville  (1801)  ;  Alexander  I.,  Czar  of  Russia 
(1801-1825) ;  Principal  Decree  of  the  Imperial 


PAGE 


145-197 


197-232 


232-235 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE 


583 


A.  D* 

Deputation  (1803);  Napoleon  becomes  emperor 
(1804);  Francis  II.  assumes  the  hereditary  title 
of  Emperor  of  Austria  (1804);  murder  of  the 
Duke  of  Enghien  (1804);  the  third  coalition 
war  against  France  (1805-1807):  surrender  of 
Mack  at  Ulm  (1805) ;  battle  of  Austerlitz 
(1805) ;  Peace  of  Pressburg  (1805) ;  the  Rhine 
Confederation  (1806) ;  end  of  the  Holy  Roman 
Empire  (1806). 

1804-1835  Francis  II.  as  emperor  of  Austria :  battles  of 
Jena  and  Auerstadt  (1806) ;  battles  of  Eylau 
and  Friedland  (1807) ;  Peace  of  Tilsit  (1807) ; 
Westphalia  under  King  Jerome  (1807-1813) ; 
reforms  of  Stein,  Scharnhorst,  and  Gneisenau  in 
Prussia  (1807-1808) ;  Fichte’s  addresses  to  the 
German  nation  (1807-1808) ;  Austria’s  war 
against  Napoleon  (1809)  ;  uprising  in  the  Tyrol 
under  Andreas  Hofer  (1809)  ;  battles  of  Aspern 
and  Wagram  (1809)  ;  Peace  of  Vienna  (1809) ; 
attempted  uprising  in  Prussia  under  Dornberg, 
Schill,  and  Frederick  William,  Duke  of  Bruns¬ 
wick  (1809) ;  Metternich,  Austrian  minister 
(1809-1848) ;  founding  of  the  University  of 
Berlin  (1810) ;  Hardenberg,  Prussian  Chancellor 
(1810-1822) ;  Napoleon’s  Russian  campaign 
(1812) ;  Convention  of  Tauroggen  between 
Russia  and  Prussia  (1812). 

1813-1814  War  of  Liberation :  Treaty  of  Kalisch  between 
Russia  and  Prussia  (Feb.  28,  1813) ;  proclama¬ 
tion  of  Frederick  William  III.  to  his  people 
(March  17)  ;  battle  of  Liitzen  or  Gross  Gorschen 
(May  2)  ;  battle  of  Bautzen  (May  20  and  21) ; 
Truce  of  Poischwitz  (June  4th  to  August  10th) ; 
Austria’s  declaration  of  war  against  Napoleon 
(Aug.  12)  ;  battle  of  Gross  Beeren  (Aug.  23)  ; 
battle  of  Dresden  (Aug.  26  and  27)  ;  battle  on 
the  Katzbach  (Aug.  26) ;  battle  of  Culm  (Aug. 
30);  battle  of  Dennewitz  (Sept.  6);  battle  of 
Leipzig  (Oct.  16-19) ;  battle  at  La  Rothiere 
(Feb.  1, 1814) ;  battle  of  Bar-sur-Aube  (Feb.  27); 


PAGE 


232-257 


257-298 


584 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


1815-1848 


1848-1850 


battle  of  Laon  (March  9  and  10)  ;  battle  of 
Arcis-sur-Aube  (March  20) ;  battle  of  Mont¬ 
martre  (March  30) ;  entry  of  the  allies  into 
Paris  (March  31)  ;  first  Peace  of  Paris  (May 
30,  1814) ;  Congress  of  Vienna  (1814-1815) ; 
Napoleon’s  return  from  Elba  (March  1,  1815). 

The  German  Confederation :  The  Act  of  Con¬ 
federation  (June  8,  1815)  ;  the  battle  of  Water¬ 
loo  (June  18,  1815);  the  founding  of  the 
Burschenschaft  (1815)  ;  the  second  Peace  of  Paris 
(Nov.  20,  1815);  William  I.,  king  of  Wiirtem- 
berg  (1816-1864);  the  Wartburg festival  (1817); 
constitution  granted  in  Weimar  (1817)  ;  consti¬ 
tutions  granted  in  Bavaria  and  Baden  (1818) ; 
Louis,  Grand  Duke  of  Baden  (1818-1830) ; 
murder  of  Kotzebue  by  Sand  (1819)  ;  Carlsbad 
decrees  (1819);  constitution  in  Wurtemberg 
(1819) ;  Vienna  Final  Act  (1820)  ;  King  Louis 
I.,  of  Bavaria  (1825-1848) ;  Nicholas,  Czar  of 
Russia  (1825-1855)  ;  Anthony  ,  king  of  Saxony 
(1827-1836) ;  the  Zollverein  founded  (1828- 
1842) ;  revolutionary  movements  (1830)  ;  Leo¬ 
pold,  Grand  Duke  of  Baden  (1830-1852)  ;  the 
Hambach  Festival  (1832)  ;  the  Frankfort  riot 
(1833)  ;  the  first  railroad  in  Germany,  Nurem- 
berg-Furth  (1835)  ;  Frederick  Augustus  II., 
king  of  Saxony  (1836-1854)  ;  Ferdinand,  em¬ 
peror  of  Austria  (1835-1848) ;  Ernest  Augustus, 
king  of  Hanover  (1837-1851) ;  Frederick  Will¬ 
iam  IV.,  king  of  Prussia  (1840-1861)  ;  the  patent 
of  February  3d  (1847),  summoning  the  United 
Diet.  '  .. 

The  Revolution  in  Germany:  Frederick  VII., 
king  of  Denmark  (1848-1863)  ;  Revolution  in 
Paris  (Feb.  23  and  24, 1848)  ;  informal  assembly 
in  Heidelberg  (March  5,  1848) ;  uprising  in 
Vienna  and  fall  of  Metternich  (March  13, 1848)  ; 
barricade  fights  in  Berlin  (March  18,  1848) ; 
abdication  of  Louis  I.,  of  Bavaria  (March  20, 
1848) ;  Maximilian  II.,  king  of  Bavaria  (1848- 


page 


298-319 


319-344 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE 


585 


A.D.  .  PAGE 

1864) ;  provisional  government  for  Schleswig- 
Holstein  (March  23, 1848)  ;  Frankfort  Ante-Par¬ 
liament  (March  31) ;  defeat  of  Hecker’s  volun¬ 
teers  at  Kandern  (April  20)  ;  General  Wrangel 
conquers  at  Schleswig  (April  23) ;  flight  of  Empe¬ 
ror  Ferdinand  from  Vienna  (May  15) ;  opening  of 
German  national  parliament  in  Frankfort  (May 
18)  ;  storming  of  the  Zeughaus  in  Berlin  (June 
15) ;  election  of  Archduke  John  as  temporary 
head  of  the  nation  (June  29)  ;  opening  of  parlia¬ 
ment  in  Vienna  (July  22)  ;  Truce  of  Malmo 
(Aug.  26)  ;  uprising  in  Frankfort  (Sept.  17  and 
18)  ;  Pfuel  ministry  in  Prussia  (Sept.  21) ;  new 
uprising  in  Vienna  (Oct.  6)  ;  Vienna  surrenders 
(Oct.  31) — Prince  Felix  Schwarzenberg  at  the 
head  of  affairs  —  Diet  transferred  to  Kremsier 
(Oct.  31) ;  ministry  of  Count  Brandenburg  in 
Prussia  (Nov.  8)  ;  Emperor  Ferdinand  abdicates 

(Dec.  2)  ;  Emperor  Francis  Joseph  (1848 - )  ; 

dissolution  of  the  Prussian  national  assembly 
(Dec.  5) ;  promulgation  of  a  constitution  for  Prus¬ 
sia  (Dec.  5) ;  dissolution  of  the  Austrian  national 
parliament  and  promulgation  of  a  constitution 
(March  4,  1849) ;  vote  in  Frankfort  to  offer  the 
imperial  crown  to  the  king  of  Prussia  (March 
28,  1849)  ;  refusal  of  the  crown  by  Frederick 
William  IV.  (April  3,  1849)  ;  suppression  of  up¬ 
rising  in  Dresden  (May  5-9,  1849)  ;  dissolution 
of  remnant  of  national  assembly  (June  18, 

1849)  ;  suppression  of  revolt  in  Baden  and  the 
Palatinate  (June,  1849);  Prussia  signs  truce 
with  Denmark  (July  10,  1849)  ;  withdrawal  of 
Archduke  John  from  head  of  affairs  (Dec.  20, 

1849)  ;  publication  of  revised  Prussian  constitu¬ 
tion  (Jan.  31, 1850) ;  Union  parliament  in  Erfurt 
(March  and  April,  1850) ;  peace  between  Prussia 
and  Denmark  (July  2,  1850) ;  battle  at  Idstedt 
(July  25,  1850) ;  constitutional  troubles  in 
Hesse  and  journey  of  Manteuffel  to  Olmiitz 
(1850).  344-374 


586 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


A.D. 

1851-1866  The  restored  German  Confederation :  The 
Diet  resumes  its  sessions  at  Frankfort  (1851); 
George  V.,  king  of  Hanover  (1851-1866); 
revocation  of  the  Austrian  constitution  (1852) ; 
Frederick,  prince  regent  of  Baden  —  grand 
duke  after  1856  (1852);  second  London  Pro¬ 
tocol  in  Schleswig-Holstein  matter  (1852); 
Napoleon  III.,  emperor  (1852);  the  Crimean 
War  (1853-1856);  a  House  of  Lords  in  Prussia 
(1854);  John,  king  of  Saxony  (1854-1873); 
Alexander  II.  becomes  Czar  of  Russia  (1855); 
Prince  William  becomes  regent  in  Prussia 
(1858);  Hohenzollern  ministry  in  Prussia 
(1858);  Austrian-Italian  war  with  France 
(1859);  battle  of  Magenta  (June  4);  battle  of 
Solferino  (June  24);  preliminary  Peace  of 
Villafranca  (July  11);  Peace  of  Zurich  (Nov. 
10);  Schmerling  ministry  in  Austria  (1860- 
1865);  accession  of  William  I.  in  Prussia 
(Jan.  2,  1861);  the  Hohenlohe  ministry  in 
Prussia  (1862);  Otto  von  Bismarck  becomes 
president  of  the  Prussian  ministry  (Oct.  8, 
1862) ;  conflict  in  the  Prussian  parliament 
(1862-1866);  Polish  revolt  (1863);  Diet  of 
Princes  in  Frankfort  (August,  1863);  death 
of  Frederick  VII.  of  Denmark  and  accession  of 
Christian  IX.  (Nov.  15,  1863);  federal  execu¬ 
tion  in  Holstein  (December,  1863);  Danish 
War  (1864);  storming  of  Diippel  by  the  Prus¬ 
sians  (April  18);  truce,  and  peace  conference 
in  London  (May  12- June  26);  passage  to  the 
Island  of  Alsen  (June  28-29);  Peace  of  Vienna 
(Oct.  30);  Louis  II.,  king  of  Bavaria  (1864); 
Charles,  king  of  Wiirtemberg  (1864);  Conven¬ 
tion  of  Gastein  between  Austria  and  Prussia 
(Aug.  14,  1865);  Prussian-Italian  treaty  (April 
8,  1866) ;  the  Austrian-Prussian  war  (June  16- 
July  22,  1866) ;  Hanover,  Hesse-Cassel,  Saxony, 
Nassau,  and  Frankfort  conquered  (June  15- 
June  20);  battle  of  Custozza  (June  24);  battle 


PAGE 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE 


587 


of  Sadowa,  or  Koniggratz  (July  3,  1866);  truce 
of  Nikolsburg  (July  26);  Treaty  of  Prague 
(Aug.  23) ;  secret  treaties  of  the  Southern 
States  with  Prussia  (1866);  demand  of  France 
for  Rhenish  territory  (July  25-Aug.  7,  1866); 
the  Belgian  project  (Aug.  16-Aug.  30). 

1866-1871  The  North  German  Confederation :  The  Lux¬ 
emburg  Question  (February  to  May,  1867)  ;  pub¬ 
lication  of  the  South  German  treaties  (March, 
1867);  acceptance  of  the  Spanish  crown  by 
Leopold  of  Hohenzollern  (July  3,  1870);  French 
declaration  (July  6);  Benedetti  and  King  Will¬ 
iam  at  Ems  (July  9-14);  Leopold  withdraws 
his  candidature  (July  12);  war  decided  upon  at 
Paris  (July  14) ;  delivery  of  the  declaration  of 
war  (July  19);  opening  of  the  North  German 
Reichstag  (July  23) ;  the  skirmish  at  Saarbrucken 
(Aug.  2);  battle  of  Weissenburg  (Aug.  4);  bat¬ 
tle  of  Worth  (Aug.  6);  battle  of  Spicheren 
(Aug.  6);  battles  of  Colombey,  Nouilly  (Aug.  14) ; 
battles  of  Vionville,  Mars-la-Tour  (Aug.  16); 
battles  of  Gravelotte,  St.  Privat,  Resonville 
(Aug.  18);  siege  of  Metz  (Aug.  19-Oct.  27); 
siege  of  Strassburg  (Aug.  14-Sept.  27);  battle 
of  Sedan  (Sept.  1);  capitulation  of  Sedan 
(Sept.  2);  republic  in  France  (Sept.  4);  siege  of 
Paris  (Sept.  19,  1870-Jan.  28,  1871);  abolition 
of  the  temporal  power  of  the  Pope  by  entry  of 
Italian  army  into  Rome  (Sept.  20,  1870);  cap¬ 
ture  of  Toul  by  the  Germans  (Sept.  23) ;  Gam- 
betta  in  Tours  (Oct.  9);  Tann  takes  Orleans 
(Oct.  12);  Tann  driven  from  Orleans  (Nov.  9); 
defeat  of  French  army  of  the  Loire  by  Prince 
Frederick  Charles  at  Beaune  la  Rolande 
(Nov.  28);  battles  of  Orleans  (Nov.  28-Dec.  2); 
battle  of  Amiens  (Nov.  27);  occupation  of 
Rouen  (Dec.  6);  battle  of  Bapaume  (Jan.  3, 
1871);  battle  of  Le  Mans  (Jan.  12);  battle 
of  Montbeliard  (Jan.  15-17) ;  proclamation 
of  the  German  Empire  in  the  Hall  of  Mirrors 


PAGB 


374-409 


588 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  GERMANY 


A.D. 


1871-1914 


in  Versailles  (Jan.  18,  1871) ;  last  great  sortie 
from  Paris  (Jan.  19) ;  battle  of  St.  Quentin 
(Jan.  19) ;  capitulation  of  Paris  by  the  Con¬ 
vention  of  Versailles  (Jan.  28) ;  the  eastern 
army  (formerly  Bourbaki’s)  crosses  the  Swiss 
frontier  (Feb.  1)  ;  preliminaries  of  peace  at  Ver¬ 
sailles  (Feb.  26)  ;  entry  of  30,000  /German  troops 
into  Paris  (March  1) ;  evacuation  of  Paris 
(March  3) ;  Peace  of  Frankfort-on-the-Main 
(May  10,  1871) ;  first  German  imperial  parlia¬ 
ment  (March  21-June  15,  1871). 

The  three-emperor  alliance  (1871-1879);  the 
Kulturkampf  (1871-1887) ;  expulsion  of  the 
Jesuits  (1872);  Kullmann’s  attempt  on  Bis¬ 
marck’s  life  (1874);  attempts  on  the  life  of 
Emperor  William  1.  (1878) ;  anti-socialist  laws 
in  force  (1878-1890) ;  dual  alliance  (Austria 
and  Germany)  (1879)  ;  International  Moroccan 
treaty  (18&0) ;  compulsory  sickness-insurance 
in  effect  (1883)  ;  triple  alliance  (Germany,  Aus¬ 
tria,  Italy)  (1883-1915) ;  compulsory  accident- 
insurance  in  effect  (1884)  ;  “reinsurance”  treaty 
with  Russia  (1884) ;  colonies  acquired  (South¬ 
west  Africa,  Togo,  Cameroon,  Kaiser-Wilhelms- 
land,  Bismarck  Archipelago,  Brown,  Provi¬ 
dence  and  Marshall  Islands,  part  of  Solomon 
Islands,  East  Africa)  (1884-1890) ;  death  of 
Emperor  William  I.  (March  17,  1888);  death 
of  Emperor  Frederick  III.  (June  15)  and  acces¬ 
sion  of  Emperor  William  II.  (1888) ;  fall  of 
Bismarck  (1890);  Caprivi  chancellor  (1890- 
1894);  Hohenlohe  chancellor  (1894-1900); 
adoption  of  civil  code  ( 'biirgerliches  Gesetzbuch ) 
(1896) ;  death  of  Bismarck  (1898) ;  Kiaouts- 
chau  acquired  (1898) ;  Caroline  and  Marian 
Islands,  Samoan  Islands  (Sawaii  and  Upolo) 
acquired  (1899) ;  Biilow  chancellor  (1900- 
1909);  repeal  of  Paragraph  II.  of  the  Jesuit 
laws  (1904);  conference  of  Algeciras  (19Q6) ; 
Polish  expropriation  law  (1907);  Bethmann- 


PAGR 


409-450 


/ 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE 

i 

Hollweg  chancellor  (1909) ;  Alsace  Lorraine 
constitution  (1911) ;  Moroccan  treaty  with 
France,  Parts  of  Congo  district  acquired 
(1911) ;  Balkan  wars  (1912^1913);  murder  of 
Austrian  heir  apparent  (June  28,  1914). 


589 

PAGE 


451-578 


INDEX 


Abdel  Malek,  500. 

Abeken,  sends  telegram  from  Ems, 
421. 

Abensberg,  286. 

About,  Edmond,  431. 

Academy  of  Sciences,  42. 

Adrianople,  504. 

Agamemnon,  507. 

Aix-la-Chapelle,  Congress  of,  1748 
a.d.,  146;  land  deals,  571. 

Albania,  504. 

Albert  of  Hohenzollern,  dissolves  the 
Teutonic  Order,  11-12. 

Albert  II.,  of  Prussia,  13. 

Alexander,  Czar  of  Russia,  forms 
third  coalition,  251 ;  at  Tilsit,  268; 
at  Erfurt,  274;  breach  with  Napo¬ 
leon  I.,  291,  319;  forms  the  Holy 
Alliance,  325. 

Alexander  III.,  Czar  of  Russia,  475- 
476. 

Alexander  VI.,  pope,  473. 

Algeciras,  conference  at,  500. 

Algiers,  498. 

Alsace,  claimed  by  Louis  XIV.,  55. 

Alsace-Lorraine,  469,  474 ;  problem 
of,  483-485 ;  status  of,  485-487. 

Alsen,  Prussian  landing  on,  392. 

Altenstein,  276 ;  Prussian  minister, 
285. 

Alt-Ranstadt,  Peace  of,  78. 

Ambas  Bay,  472. 

Amiens,  battle  at,  444. 

Andrassy,  Count,  476. 

Angra  Pequena,  Bay  of,  469. 

Ante-parliament,  the,  345. 

Arndt,  Ernst  Moritz,  276,  282  ;  in  St. 
Petersburg,  294,  329  ;  petty  perse¬ 
cution  of,  334-335,  337,  353,  368. 

Arnim,  Count,  455. 

Arnold,  miller,  case  of,  196. 

Aspern,  battle  of,  288. 

Auerstadt,  battle  of,  262. 


Auerswald,  General  von,  murder  of, 
356. 

Augsburg,  League  of,  58. 

Augustenburg,  Duke  of,  386 ;  inter¬ 
view  with  Bismarck,  391 ;  as  a 
brand  of  discord,  394-395. 

Augustus  the  Strong,  of  Saxony,  50, 
51 ;  king  of  Poland,  77. 

Augustus  III.,  of  Saxony  (II.  of  Po¬ 
land),  121,  154. 

Augustus  William,  brother  of  Fred¬ 
erick  the  Great,  160. 

Aulis,  457. 

Aurelles,  French  general,  444. 

Austerlitz,  battle  of,  254. 

Austria,  deserted  at  Utrecht,  83 ; 
allies  of,  131 ;  shares  in  the  parti¬ 
tion  of  Poland,  209 ;  becomes  an 
empire,  250 ;  at  odds  with  Frank¬ 
fort  parliament,  360;  at  war  with 
France,  1859  a.d.,  378;  at  odds 
with  Prussia  on  Schleswig-Holstein 
question,  394 ;  threatens  federal 
execution  against  Prussia,  396 ; 
breach  with  Prussia,  1866  a.d., 
397 ;  at  war  with  Prussia,  1866  a.d., 
398  ff . ;  alliance  with  Germany, 
475-476 ;  and  the  Balkans,  475, 
502-504,  507. 

Austrians,  constitution  granted  to, 
348. 

Babelsberg,  interview  at,  382. 

Bachem,  Julius,  494-495. 

Baden,  Margrave  of,  73. 

Baden,  Treaty  of,  1715  a.dm  85; 
grants  constitution,  327 ;  rebellion 
in,  1848  a.d.,  366;  campaign  of 
Prince  William  in,  367 ;  for  a 
united  Germany,  448 ;  and  the 
Kulturkampf,  454. 

Balkans,  wars  in  the,  475,  477,  502- 
505. 


591 


592 


INDEX 


Bar-sur-Aube,  battle  of,  313. 

Bartenstein,  Treaty  of,  267. 

Basel,  Peace  of,  1795  a.d.,  239. 

Battenberg,  Prince  Alexander  of, 
477,  479-480. 

Bautzen,  battle  of,  1812  a.d.,  304. 

Bavaria,  sides  with  France  in  Spanish 
Succession  War,  70;  Succession 
War,  212  ff. ;  grants  constitution, 
327 ;  concessions  made  to,  in  1871 
a.d.,  468;  assumes  control  of 
electric  power,  515. 

Bazaine,  French  marshal,  431 ;  driven 
into  Metz,  432-442. 

Bazoches,  battle  at,  444. 

Beaugency,  battle  at,  444. 

Beaune-la-Rolande,  battle  at,  444. 

Bebel,  August,  elected  to  Reichstag, 
460,  462 ;  his  memoirs,  463,  493. 

Beethoven,  250 ;  gives  concert,  317. 

Belfort,  battle  at,  444. 

Belgrade,  Peace  of,  1739  a.d.,  51. 

Belle-Isle,  French  envoy,  135 ;  re¬ 
treats  from  Prague,  139. 

Benedek,  Austrian  commander,  399, 
403,  405. 

Benedetti,  French  envoy,  at  Ems, 
420-421. 

Benningsen,  member  of  North  Ger¬ 
man  Parliament,  416-417. 

Berard,  V.,  French  writer,  526. 

Berg,  duchy  of,  Prussian  claim  to, 
105. 

Berlichingen,  Austrian  general,  133. 

Berlin,  entered  by  Haddik,  162 ;  in 
a  state  of  siege,  462-463  ;  congress 
of,  475-476,  502 ;  profits  from  gas¬ 
works,  569 ;  572,  576. 

Bernadotte,  243  ;  dishonesty  of,  306  ; 
friction  with,  307 ;  differences  with 
Bliicher,  308. 

Bernhardi,  Prussian  envoy,  401. 

Bernstein,  socialist  leader,  493. 

Beseler,  scientist,  529. 

Bestucheff,  Russian  prime  minister, 
147,  167. 

Bethmann-Hollweg,  chancellor,  482. 

Betschuanaland,  470. 

Bevern,  Duke  of,  159 ;  Prussian  gen¬ 
eral,  164. 

Beyme,  councillor  of  Frederick  Wil¬ 
liam  III.,  272,  336. 

Bibundi,  472. 


Biedermann,  Marcin,  490. 

Binzer,  Augustus,  337. 

Bismarck  Archipelago,  472. 

Bismarck,  Herbert,  472,  473 ;  mar¬ 
riage  of,  482. 

Bismarck,  Otto  von,  in  Prussian  Land¬ 
tag,  374  ;  in  the  Erfurt  Parliament, 
375 ;  at  the  Diet  of  Frankfort,  375 ; 
becomes  prime  minister,  382 ;  at 
odds  with  the  Parliament,  383  ff. ; 
hated  in  England,  385 ;  views  on 
Schleswig-Holstein  question,  387 ; 
saves  Saxony  from  dismemberment, 
409 ;  asks  indemnity  from  the  Prus¬ 
sian  Parliament,  412 ;  and  the 
Luxemburg  question,  417 ;  and 
the  Spanish  candidature,  418; 
sends  Ems  telegram  to  consuls,  421 ; 
exposes  plans  of  Napoleon  III., 
427 ;  at  Sedan,  434 ;  treats  with 
Jules  Favre,  438;  and  the  bom¬ 
bardment  of  Paris,  441 ;  and  the 
founding  of  the  new  empire,  449, 
452;  and  the  Kulturkampf,  452- 
459 ;  attempted  assassination  of, 
458;  and  social  democracy,  459- 
466;  and  the  National  Liberals, 
464-465 ;  and  compulsory  insur¬ 
ance,  466-467 ;  and  the  Prussian 
state  railroads,  467-469 ;  colonial 
policy  of,  469-474 ;  foreign  policy 
of,  471-477 ;  and  Frederick  III., 
477-478 ;  and  William  II.,  478-480 ; 
fall  of,  480-481 ;  last  years  and 
death,  482-483,  492. 

Bittenfeld,  Herrwarth  von,  Prussian 
general,  392. 

Black  Eagle,  order  of,  founded,  37. 

Bleichroeder,  banker,  471. 

Blenheim,  battle  of,  74  ff. 

Bliicher,  Prussian  general,  228,  263; 
made  commander,  302 ;  in  Silesia, 
305  ;  differences  with  Bernadotte, 
308 ;  marches  on  Paris,  313,  319, 
337,  471. 

Blum,  Robert,  execution  of,  357. 

Bordeaux,  Compact  of,  1871  a.d.,  447. 

Borneo,  471. 

Borodino,  battle  of,  295. 

Bosnia,  502-503. 

Boulanger,  General,  474. 

Bourbaki,  French  general,  444 ;  dis¬ 
missed  from  the  command,  445. 


INDEX 


593 


Bournonville,  53. 

Boyen,  263,  278,  294,  336. 

Brandenburg,  Count,  Prussian  minis¬ 
ter,  358. 

Brandenburg,  the  early  margraves  of, 
1 ;  the  Reformation  in,  3  ;  and  the 
Cleves  inheritance,  4 ;  and  the 
Thirty  Years’  War,  8. 

Brandenburg  Gate,  the  Victoria 
stolen  from,  265;  return  of  the 
Victoria,  315. 

Breslau,  Treaty  of,  1742  a.d.,  138; 
aid  schools  in,  545 ;  playgrounds  in, 
550;  575. 

Broglie,  Duke  of,  138. 

Browne,  Austrian  general,  154. 

Browne  Islands,  472. 

Brunswick,  Duke  of,  issues  manifesto, 
235;  poor  leadership  of,  261. 

Bucharest,  peace  of,  505. 

v.  Billow,  chancellor,  482 ;  Polish 
policy  of,  488-491 ;  Moroccan  pol¬ 
icy  of,  499 ;  defends  and  warns 
William  II.,  502. 

Bundesrath,  the,  414. 

Bunsen,  Prussian  ambassador,  351 ; 
correspondence  with  Frederick  Wil¬ 
liam  IV.,  364,  376. 

Bunzelwitz,  camp  of,  177. 

Burkersdorf,  battle  of,  180 ;  skirmish 
at,  404. 

Burschenschaft,  founding  of,  329 ; 
dissolution  of,  337. 

Bute,  Lord,  succeeds  Pitt,  177 ;  with¬ 
draws  Prussian  subsidies,  178. 

Cameroon,  471-472. 

Camphausen,  Prussian  minister,  357. 

Campo  Formio,  Peace  of,  1797  a.d., 
241. 

Canossa,  453,  457,  465. 

Cape  Colony,  469,  470. 

Cape  Town,  469. 

Caprivi,  Chancellor,  482,  487,  492. 

Carlos  II.,  52 ;  death-bed  of,  68. 

Carlowitz,  Peace  of,  1699  a.d.,  51. 

Carlsbad,  decrees  of,  335. 

Carmer,  Prussian  chancellor,  196. 

Caroline  Islands,  465,  472-473. 

Casimir,  John,  of  Poland,  14,  15. 

Catherine  II.,  Czarina  of  Russia,  180, 
205,  206 ;  ends  Bavarian  succession 
war,  215. 

—  2  Q 


Catinat,  General,  71. 

Catte,  Lieutenant,  execution  of,  116. 

Centre  Party,  in  conflict  with  Bis¬ 
marck,  458-459 ;  schism  in,  494- 
496. 

Chanzy,  French  general,  444. 

Charles,  Archduke,  286,  402. 

Charles,  of  Zweibrucken,  213. 

Charles  Theodor,  Count  Palatine, 
213. 

Charles  III.,  claimant  to  Spanish 
throne  (as  Emperor  Charles  VI.), 
74 ;  succeeds  to  the  empire,  82 ; 
continues  war  after  Utrecht,  84- 
85 ;  Pragmatic  Sanction  of,  106- 
107 ;  relations  with  Frederick 
William  I.,  107 ;  death  of,  124. 

Charles  VII.,  Emperor,  136-137. 

Charles  XII.,  of  Sweden,  77 ;  in 
Silesia,  78;  loses  part  of  Pome¬ 
rania,  105. 

Charlottenburg,  building  of,  41 ;  one 
of  the  most  progressive  cities,  543; 
545,  573. 

Chateaudun,  battle  at,  444. 

Chateau-Thierry,  312. 

Ch&tillon,  Congress  of,  311,  314. 

Chotusitz,  battle  of,  137. 

Christian  IX.,  king  of  Denmark,  388. 

Cialdini,  Italian  general,  407. 

Clause witz,  278. 

Clement,  secret  political  agent,  107. 

Clement,  French  general,  167. 

Clement  XI.  and  Joseph  I.,  79-80. 

Clement  XII.,  36. 

Clement  XIV.,  pope,  496. 

Cleves- Julier  divided  between  Bran¬ 
denburg  and  Pfalz-Neuburg,  4  ff. 

Clinchant,  French  general,  445. 

Coal  output  (see  Germany  economic 
progress) . 

Colberg,  177 ;  resistance  of,  264. 

Cologne,  labor  bureau  at,  560;  cuts 
boulevards,  572 ;  575. 

Colombey,  battle  at,  431. 

Congo  district,  471,  472. 

Connewitz,  skirmish  at,  309. 

Constitution,  the  Prussian,  372. 

Contades,  French  commander,  172. 

Continuation  schools  (see  Germany, 
economic  progress). 

Conz  Bridge,  battle  at,  54. 

Coulmiers,  battle  at,  444. 


VOL.  II 


594 


INDEX 


Crimean  War,  the,  377-378. 

Crouzat,  French  general,  444. 

Crown  Prince  (Frederick  William), 
385. 

Cucchiari,  Italian  general,  402. 

Custozza,  battle  of,  402. 

Czernitscheff,  Russian  general,  175, 
179. 

Danckelmann,  Eberhard  von,  38-39. 

Danewerk,  the  capture  of  the,  389. 

Daun,  Austrian  general,  159,  168,  169, 
175. 

Davoust,  French  general,  253. 

Delcasse,  French  minister,  500. 

Denmark,  war  with,  1864  a. d.,  388  ff. ; 
peace  with,  1864  a.d.,  392 ;  and 
North  Schleswig,  487-488. 

Derby,  Lord,  470. 

Dessau,  Prince  Leopold  of,  105 ; 
bravery  at  Kesselsdorf,  144. 

Dettingen,  battle  of,  139. 

Devolution  war,  of  Louis  XIV.,  52. 

Dijon,  battle  at,  444. 

Dollinger,  theologian,  454-456. 

Dornberg,  287. 

Dorothea,  wife  of  the  Great  Elector, 
27. 

Dresden,  Peace  of,  1745  a.d.,  145; 
Napoleon  at,  294;  battle  of,  307; 
crematory  at,  578. 

Drouyn  de  Lhuys,  French  minister, 
416. 

Diippel,  redoubts  of,  389. 

Diisseldorf,  harbor  of,  519 ;  increase 
in  population,  520 ;  policy  towards 
workmen,  568 ;  claims  patents, 
569;  conducts  wine-business,  570; 
does  own  banking,  571,  575. 

East  Africa,  473. 

Economic  progress  ( see  Germany, 
economic  progress). 

Eggmuhl,  286. 

Eisenmann,  Bavarian  revolutionist, 
352. 

Elizabeth  Charlotte,  Duchess  of  Or¬ 
leans,  56,  60. 

Elizabeth  Christine,  wife  of  Frederick 
the  Great,  119  ff.,  185. 

Elizabeth,  Czarina  of  Russia,  152, 
171 ;  hates  Frederick  the  Great, 
147  ;  death  of,  179. 


El  Ksar,  500. 

Emancipation  Edict,  1807  a.d.,  276. 

Emily,  Marquise  du  Chatelet,  189. 

Emin  Pasha,  explorer,  474. 

Empire,  the,  small  principalities  of, 
219  ;  the  Diet  of,  222 ;  the  Cham¬ 
ber  Court  of,  224 ;  weakness  of, 
242 ;  question  of,  449. 

Empire,  Holy  Roman,  end  of,  256. 

Ems,  the  famous  despatch  from,  419  ; 
what  really  happened  at,  in  1870, 
420-421. 

Engels,  Friedrich,  460. 

Enghien,  Duke  of,  murdered,  249. 

England,  deserts  Austria  at  Utrecht, 
83 ;  acquisitions  by  Peace  of 
Utrecht,  84;  aids  Frederick  the 
Great  in,  Seven  Years’  War,  166; 
signs  agreement  with  France,  499  ; 
and  the  Moroccan  question,  500- 
501. 

Erfurt,  fortress  of,  falls,  263 ;  meet¬ 
ing  of  emperors  at,  274 ;  Union 
Parliament  at,  371-372. 

Ernest  Augustus  of  Hanover,  62. 

Etival,  battle  at,  444. 

Eugene  of  Savoy,  in  the  Turkish 
wars,  51 ;  in  Spanish  Succession 
War,  71;  at  Blenheim,  74  ff . ;  in 
Belgium,  80  ff. ;  intrigues  of,  108. 

Eugenie,  Empress,  423,  432. 

Eylau,  battle  of,  267. 

Falk,  Adalbert,  minister,  456 ;  re¬ 
signs,  465. 

Favre,  Jules,  438;  at  Versailles, 
446. 

Fehrbellin,  battle  of,  25. 

Ferdinand,  Emperor,  346. 

Ferdinand  of  Brunswick  commands 
Hanoverian  forces,  166. 

Fermor,  Russian  general,  167,  174. 

Ferri&res,  negotiations  at,  438. 

Festetics,  Count  of,  405. 

Fez,  500. 

Fichte,  John  Gottlieb,  276,  282,  300, 
329. 

Fiji  Islands,  471. 

Finck,  Prussian  general,  173. 

Firmian,  Archbishop  of  Salzburg, 
99  ff. 

Follen,  Augustus,  332. 

Fontainebleau,  treaty  of,  180. 


INDEX 


595 


France,  proves  a  poor  ally  to  Fred¬ 
erick  the  Great,  140 ;  provokes 
Germany  to  war,  1870  a.d.,  417 ; 
hurried  into  war,  1870  a.d.,  422; 
the  republic  proclaimed,  1870  a.d., 
437 ;  and  the  Moroccan  question, 
498-501. 

Francis  Joseph,  becomes  emperor  of 
Austria,  362  ;  476,  480 ;  refuses  to 
receive  Bismarck,  483. 

Francis  of  Lorraine,  130;  elected 
emperor,  143. 

Francis  II.,  Emperor,  234 ;  becomes 
emperor  of  Austria,  250,  290,  324. 

Francke,  41,  42. 

Franco-Austrian  War,  378. 

Franco-Prussian  War,  425  ff. ;  igno¬ 
rance  and  conceit  of  the  French, 
426. 

Frankfort,  disturbances  in,  1830  a.d., 
339 ;  ante-parliament  in,  352 ;  na¬ 
tional  parliament  in,  353  ff. ;  riot 
in,  1848  a.d.,  355 ;  national  parlia¬ 
ment  of,  360  ff . ;  ending  of  parlia¬ 
ment,  368 ;  taken  by  Prussia,  400 ; 
Treaty  of,  1871  a.d.,  447 ;  obser¬ 
vation  farm  in,  545 ;  profits  from 
electric  plant  in,  569 ;  real  estate 
business  in,  571 ;  house  inspection 
in,  572 ;  charity  organizations  in, 
574 ;  burial  system  in,  576-577 ; 
cremation  in,  578. 

Frederick  Charles,  Prince,  in  the 
Danish  War,  392;  in  the  Franco- 
Prussian  War,  428;  at  Metz,  431 ; 
surrounds  Metz,  432. 

Frederick  the  Great,  youth  of,  112  ff. ; 
as  crown  prince,  attempt  at  flight, 
114  ff. ;  life  at  Kiistrin,  117  ff. ;  res¬ 
toration  to  favor,  118 ;  marriage  of, 
119  ff. ;  accession  of,  123  ;  descends 
on  Silesia,  125 ;  entry  into  Breslau, 
128;  attempts  on  his  life,  132;  runs 
from  Mollwitz,  133  ;  makes  treaty 
with  the  French,  1741  a.d.,  135; 
and  George  II.,  139  ;  hates  George 
II.,  149 ;  and  the  beginning  of  the 
Seven  Years’  War,  152  ff. ;  occupies 
Saxony,  1756  a.d.,  153 ;  isolation 
of,  1756  a.d.,  156;  absolutism  of, 
157 ;  sympathy  of  Germans  for, 
161 ;  courage  of,  after  Rossbach, 
165 ;  retreats  from  Moravia,  167  ; 


in  despair  after  Kiinersdorf,  172; 
dwindling  resources  of,  174,  177 ; 
personality  of,  182 ;  cynicism  of, 
184 ;  coldness  to  his  wife,  184 ; 
first  meeting  with  Voltaire,  188; 
as  musician  and  author,  192 ;  ad¬ 
ministration  and  reforms,  193  ff. ; 
after  the  Seven  Years’  War,  197 ; 
inflation  of  the  coinage,  198 ;  in¬ 
dustrial  policy,  199  ff. ;  as  drill 
master,  202 ;  withdraws  from  the 
Bavarian  Succession  War,  214; 
death  of,  217. 

Frederick  I.,  elector  of  Brandenburg, 
1. 

Frederick  II.,  elector  of  Branden¬ 
burg,  2. 

Frederick  (III.)  I.,  personality  of,  29 ; 
taxation  under,  30;  acquisition  of 
the  royal  crown,  31  ff. ;  coronation 
at  Konigsberg,  36  ff. ;  buys  terri¬ 
tory,  40 ;  death  of,  42. 

Frederick  William,  Great  Elector, 
early  training,  9-10;  wars  with 
Sweden  and  Poland,  13  ff . ;  struggle 
with  Prussian  estates,  17-  ff. ;  re¬ 
stores  order  in  Prussia,  21  ff. ;  re¬ 
forms  and  improvements  of,  22  ff . ; 
dealings  with  Louis  XIV.,  24  ff. ; 
winter  campaign  in  Sweden,  26 ; 
dealings  with  Louis  XIV.,  27 ; 
death  of,  29 ;  wars  with  Louis 
XIV.,  53 ;  alliance  with  Louis 
XIV.,  56. 

Frederick  William  (the  crown  prince), 
at  Sedan,  433 ;  accession  as  Em¬ 
peror  Frederick  III.,  477 ;  death 
of,  478,  479. 

Frederick  William  I.,  as  crown  prince, 
81 ;  accession,  87 ;  real  character 
of,  89  ff. ;  retrenchments  of,  90-91 ; 
centralization  of  the  administra¬ 
tion,  92 ;  activity  of,  93  ;  the  “In¬ 
struction”  of,  1723  a.d.,  94;  finan¬ 
cial  and  administrative  reforms, 
95  ff . ;  protects  the  Salzburg 
Protestants,  99 ;  system  of  re¬ 
cruiting  the  army,  101  ff. ;  his  love 
for  tall  soldiers,  103-104 ;  his  war 
with  Charles  XII.,  104-105 ;  rela¬ 
tions  with  Charles  VI.,  107 ;  and 
the  double-marriage  project,  110; 
relations  with  his  son,  111  ff. ;  deal- 


596 


INDEX 


ings  with  Austria,  120  ff. ;  death  of, 
122. 

Frederick  William  II.,  becomes  a 
Rosicrucian,  226 ;  court  of,  227 ; 
wives  of,  227 ;  lax  rule  of,  228 ; 
war  in  Holland,  229 ;  foreign 
policy  of,  229 ;  signs  the  Peace  of 
Basel,  239  ;  death  of,  245. 

Frederick  William  III.,  accession  of, 
245 ;  incapacity  of,  246  ;  inactivity 
of,  248 ;  declares  wrar  against 
France,  1806  a.d.,  258;  folly  and 
weakness  of,  259  ;  before  Jena,  261 ; 
at  Tilsit,  268;  takes  up  the  work 
of  reform,  270;  will  not  take  to 
arms,  1808  a.d.,  283 ;  attitude  to 
York,  297 ;  consents  to  desert 
Napoleon,  298;  promises  a  con¬ 
stitution,  326 ;  influenced  by  Met- 
ternich,  331 ;  popularity  of,  339. 

Frederick  William  IV.,  opening  of 
the  reign,  341 ;  dissatisfaction  with, 
342 ;  heads  the  revolution,  351 ; 
and  the  Schleswig-Holstein  ques¬ 
tion,  355 ;  grants  a  constitution, 
359 ;  and  the  parliament  of  Frank¬ 
fort,  362  ff. ;  views  as  to  the  im¬ 
perial  crown,  364 ;  refuses  imperial 
crown,  365  ;  death  of,  379. 

Frederike  Ulrica,  sister  of  Frederick 
the  Great,  148. 

French  Revolution,  enthusiasm  for,  in 
Germany,  231 ;  causes  friction  in 
Germany,  232. 

Friedland,  battle  of,  267. 

Frossard,  French  general,  429 ;  at 
Spicheren,  430. 

Fulda,  456. 

Fiirst,  Prussian  chancellor,  196. 

Fiirstenberg,  Count  Egon,  502. 

Fiirstenbund,  the,  216. 

Fiissen,  Treaty  of,  143. 

Fuster,  Edouard,  562. 

Gablenz,  Austrian  governor  in  Schles¬ 
wig-Holstein,  395. 

Gagern,  Heinrich  von,  354. 

Gambetta,  French  patriot,  439, 
445. 

Gastein,  Treaty  of,  393,  394. 

George  William,  elector  of  Branden¬ 
burg,  8-9. 

George  William  of  Celle,  62. 


George  II.,  and  Frederick  William  I., 
110;  hates  Frederick  the  Great, 
131 ;  and  Frederick  the  Great, 
139 ;  hated  by  Frederick  the 
Great,  149. 

George  III.  of  England,  180. 

German  Confederation,  establish¬ 
ment  of,  322. 

Germany  achieves  unity,  447. 

Germany,  economic  progress  in : 
agriculture,  509-514,  521-522,  528- 
529 ;  industrial  development,  512 
ff . ;  coal  output,  512-513;  iron 
output,  513-514 ;  use  of  electric 
power,  514-515;  foreign  trade, 
515 ;  railroad  traffic,  516-518 
canals  and  waterways,  518-520 
cooperative  societies,  522-524 
Vereine,  524-526 ;  trades-unions, 
526-527 ;  forms  of  business  enter¬ 
prise,  527-528 ;  application  of 
science  to  industry,  529-531 ;  in¬ 
dustrial  training,  531-533 ;  trade 
schools,  533-535 ;  continuation 
schools,  535-541 ;  apprenticeship, 
537-538. 

Germany,  social  progress  in :  in¬ 
fant  welfare,  542-545 ;  mother- 
advice  stations,  544 ;  types  of 
schools,  544-547  ;  school  hygiene, 
548-550 ;  playgrounds,  550 ;  juve¬ 
nile  protection,  550-559 ;  associa¬ 
tions  for  the  young,  551-556 ;  gov¬ 
ernment  encouragement  of  sport, 
554-557 ;  juvenile  delinquents, 
557-559 ;  free  labor  bureaus,  559- 
561 ;  national  compulsory  insur¬ 
ance,  561-567  ;  social  policy  of  rail¬ 
roads,  567  ;  of  the  post-office,  568 ; 
city-run  industries,  569-571 ;  city 
real-estate  transactions,  571-572; 
housing  conditions,  572-573  ;  bach¬ 
elor  homes,  573  ;  municipal  savings 
banks,  573  ;  city  pawnshops,  574 ; 
industrial  museums,  575 ;  work¬ 
men’s  museums,  575;  care  of  sick, 
575;  care  of  insane,  576;  munici¬ 
pal  funerals,  576;  cremation, 
577-578. 

Gertruydenberg,  conferences  at,  81. 

Gessler,  bravery  at  Hohenfriedberg, 
142. 

Girondins,  the,  bring  about  war,  233. 


INDEX 


597 


Gitchin,  skirmish  at,  403. 

Glucksburg,  Christian  of,  386. 
Gneisenau,  in  Colberg,  264,  276,  278, 
293,  312,  334,  337. 

Godfrey,  firm  of,  471. 

Goethe,  162;  meets  Napoleon,  274. 
Goltz,  Prussian  ambassador,  408. 
v.  d.  Goltz,  Fieldmarshal,  505. 

Gotha,  socialist  factions  combine  at, 
461-462. 

Gottingen  seven,  341. 

Gramont,  French  minister,  421. 

Grand  alliance,  the,  69. 

Grand  army,  return  of,  from  Russia, 
295. 

Granville,  Lord,  470. 

Gravelotte,  battle  of,  431,  432. 

Great  Elector,  see  Frederick  William. 
Gregory  VII.,  pope,  453. 

Grey,  Sir  Edward,  500,  501. 

Grimm,  the  brothers,  341. 

Grodno,  dumb  session  of,  236. 
Grolmann,  278,  312. 

Gross  Beeren,  battle  of,  306. 
Grossdeutsche  party  formed  at 
Frankfort,  361. 

Grumbkow,  councillor  of  Frederick 
William  I.,  108  £f. 

Haddik,  Austrian  general,  162. 
Hallue,  battle  on  the,  444. 

Hambach,  festival  at,  338. 

Hamburg,  treaty  with  Zanzibar,  471. 
Hanover,  made  an  electorate,  62  ;  en¬ 
tered  by  Mortier’s  forces,  248 ;  of¬ 
fered  to  England  by  Napoleon,  257  ; 
conquered  by  Prussia,  400. 
Hanoverians,  the,  sorrow  at  being  con¬ 
quered,  413. 

Hansemann,  banker,  471. 
Hardenberg,  275 ;  administration  of, 
292  ff. 

Harzburg,  the,  453. 

Hassenpflug,  Hessian  minister,  373. 
Haugwitz,  mission  of,  255,  272. 
Hecker,  Baden  revolutionist,  353. 
Heidelberg,  castle  laid  in  ruins,  59. 
Heine,  scientist,  529. 

Helgoland,  474,  482. 

Henry,  brother  of  Frederick  the 
Great,  169. 

Henry  IV.  of  France,  and  the  Cleves 
inheritance,  6. 


Henry  IV.,  emperor,  453,  454. 

Herrenhausen,  Treaty  of,  108. 

Herz,  Henriette,  265. 

Herzegovina,  475,  503. 

Hesse,  affair  of,  1850  a.d.,  373  ;  for  a 
united  Germany,  448 ;  and  the 
Kulturkampf,  454. 

Hewett,  British  consul,  472. 

Hildburghausen,  imperial  general, 
162. 

Hochkirch,  battle  of,  169,  170. 

Hofer,  Andreas,  288,  290. 

Hohenfriedberg,  battle  of,  142. 

Hohenlohe,  Cardinal,  457. 

Hohenlohe,  Countess,  396. 

Hohenlohe,  Prince,  479  ;  Chancellor, 
482;  arraigns  junkers,  497. 

Hohenlohe,  Prussian  general,  263. 

Holy  Alliance,  325. 

Hotham,  Sir  Charles,  insult  to,  110- 

111. 

Iioyos,  Countess,  weds  Herbert  Bis¬ 
marck,  482. 

Hubertsburg,  Peace  of,  180. 

Huguenots  in  Berlin,  28. 

Humbert,  crown  prince  of  Italy,  402. 

Humboldt,  336. 

Imperial  Deputation,  Principal  De¬ 
cree  of,  246-247. 

Infants,  care  of  (see  Germany,  social 
progress) . 

Inland  harbors  (see  Germany,  eco¬ 
nomic  progress). 

Insane,  care  of  the  (see  Germany, 
social  progress). 

Institutes  of  Technology  (see  Ger¬ 
many,  economic  progress). 

Insurance,  compulsory,  466-468  (see 
also  Germany,  social  progress). 

Iron  output  (see  Germany,  economic 
progress) . 

Itzenplitz,  Count,  466. 

Jahn,  Father,  282,  329,  334,  353,  355. 

Jellachich,  Austrian  general,  356. 

Jemappes,  battle  of,  234. 

Jena,  battle  of,  262. 

Jesuits,  expulsion  of,  457 ;  466,  495- 
496. 

Jews,  obliged  to  take  Christian 
names,  292. 

Joachim  I.,  elector  of  Brandenburg,  2. 


598 


INDEX 


Joachim  II.,  elector  of  Brandenburg, 
3,  12. 

John,  Archduke,  288,  354. 

Joseph  I.,  Emperor,  77 ;  and  Clement 
XI.,  79-80 ;  death  of,  82. 

Joseph  II.,  Emperor,  205;  claims  to 
Bavaria,  212;  ambitious  plans  of, 
215. 

Joseph  Ferdinand,  heir  to  Spanish  in¬ 
heritance,  67. 

Jourdan,  French  general,  240,  244. 
Juliers,  Prussian  claim  to,  106. 
Junkers,  the,  496-497,  509. 

Juvenile  reform  (see  Germany,  social 
progress) . 

Kaiser  Wilhelmsland,  472. 
Kalckreuth,  Prussian  general,  262. 
Kalckstein,  Prussian  agitator,  20. 
Kalihari,  470. 

Kalisch,  Treaty  of,  299. 

Kamptz,  Minister  of  Police,  335. 
Kara  Mustapha,  48-49. 
v.  Kardoff,  Reichstag  member,  483. 
Katzbach,  battle  on  the,  305. 
Kaunitz,  151. 

Kay,  battle  of,  171. 

Keith,  page  of  crown  prince,  115. 
Keith,  Prussian  marshal,  170,  187. 
Kesselsdorf,  battle  of,  144. 
Kiaoutschou,  acquisition  of,  481-482. 
Kinkel,  poet  and  revolutionist,  367. 
Kirkkilisse,  504. 

Kissingen,  458,  465. 
Klein-Schnellendorf,  truce  of,  136. 
Kleist,  Prussian  general,  307,  312. 
Kloster-Zeven,  Convention  of,  160, 
166. 

Kockeritz,  Prussian  general,  261. 
Kolin,  defeat  of  Frederick  at,  159. 
Koniggratz,  battle  of  (or  Sadowa), 
404  ff. 

Konigsberg,  Treaty  of,  1656  a.d.,  14; 

playgrounds  in,  550 ;  569. 
Konigsmark,  Count,  63. 

Koprili,  Achmed,  45,  47. 

Kosciusko,  Polish  patriot,  237. 
Kossuth,  346. 

Kotzebue,  330;  murdered  by  Karl 
Sand,  332. 

Krismanic,  Austrian  general,  399. 
Kullmann,  assassin,  458. 

Kulm,  battle  of,  307. 


Kulturkampf,  the,  453-459,  465- 
466,  492,  496. 

Kumanowo,  504. 

Kiinersdorf,  battle  of,  171. 

Labiau,  Treaty  of,  1656  a.d.,  15. 
Labor  bureaus  (see  Germany,  social 
progress) . 

Lacy,  Austrian  general,  175. 

La  F&re  Champenoise,  skirmish  at, 
314. 

La  Hogue,  battle  off,  61. 

La  Marmora,  Italian  general,  401- 
402. 

La  Mettrie,  scientist,  191. 

La  Rothiere,  battle  of,  311. 
Landshut,  286. 

Landsturm,  299;  description  of,  301. 
Landwehr,  299 ;  description  of,  300. 
Langenaubach,  571. 

Langensalza,  skirmish  at,  400. 

Laon,  battle  of,  313. 

Larasch,  harbor  of,  500. 

Lassalle,  Ferdinand,  460-461. 
Lauenburg,  Duke  of  (Bismarck),  481. 
Laudon,  Austrian  general,  167,  168, 
171,  175. 

Laxenburg  alliance,  57. 

League  of  the  three  kingdoms,  371. 
Leibnitz,  41. 

Leipzig,  battle  of,  308  ff. ;  commercial 
institute  at,  533 ;  exposition  at, 
575. 

Le  Mans,  battle  of,  444. 

Leo  XIII.,  pope,  473. 

Leopold  I.,  Emperor,  dealings  with 
Frederick  I.,  33  ;  reason  for  claim¬ 
ing  Spanish  inheritance,  66. 
Leopold  II.,  Emperor,  233. 

Leopold  of  Hohenzollern,  418. 
Lesczinsky,  Stanislaus,  78,  121. 
Leuthen,  battle  of,  165. 

Lichnowsky,  Prince,  murder  of,  356. 
Liebknecht,  socialist,  493. 

Liegnitz,  battle  of,  175. 

Ligny,  battle  of,  319. 

Lille,  battle  of,  80. 

Lissa,  battle  of,  407. 

Livingstone,  explorer,  469. 
Lloyd-George,  chancellor  of  the 
Exchequer,  500-501. 

Lobositz,  154. 
v.  Lochow,  scientist,  529. 


INDEX 


599 


Lbhnung,  apothecary  at  Schwalbach, 
333. 

Loigny,  battle  at,  444. 

Loire,  campaign  on  the,  1870-71  a.d., 
443. 

Lola  Montez,  345. 

Lombard,  councillor  of  Frederick 
William  III.,  272. 

London  Protocol,  1850  a.d.,  386. 

London,  Treaty  of,  1852  a.d.,  386 ; 
Conference  of,  1864  a.d.,  390. 

Loos  Islands,  472. 

Louis  of  Baden,  50;  margrave,  75; 
death  of,  79. 

Louis,  Prince  of  Saarbriicken,  429. 

Louis  I.,  of  Bavaria,  345. 

Louis  XIV.,  checks  the  Great  Elector, 
17 ;  dealings  with,  the  Great  Elec¬ 
tor,  27  ;  and  the  Turkish  War,  49  ; 
and  the  Triple  Alliance,  52 ;  reason 
for  claiming  Spanish  inheritance,  66. 

Louis  XV.  of  France,  155. 

Louis  XVIII.,  return  of,  315. 

Louise  of  Mecklenburg,  Queen  of 
Prussia,  245. 

Lucadou,  commandant  of  Colberg, 
264. 

Liideritz,  trader,  acquires  Southwest 
Africa,  469-471. 

Ludwigshafers,  520. 

Lule  Burgas,  504. 

Lun6ville,  Peace  of,  245. 

Liitzen,  battle  of,  1812  a.d.,  303. 

Luxemburg,  Rosa,  494. 

Luxemburg,  the  question  of,  416. 

Macedonia,  504. 

Mack,  Austrian  general,  surrenders 
at  Ulm,  252-254. 

MacMahon,  French  marshal,  routed 
at  Worth,  439;  at  Sedan,  433;  442. 

Madrid,  German  embassy  attacked 
in,  473 ;  treaty  signed  at,  498. 

Magdeburg,  fall  of,  1806  a.d.,  263. 

Mahomet  IV.,  46. 

Mainz,  Central  Commission  at,  336, 
337. 

v.  Mallinckrot,  Centrist,  454. 

Malplaquet,  battle  of,  81. 

Mannheim,  harbor  of,  519. 

Manteuffel,  Prussian  minister,  374 ; 
governor  of  Schleswig,  397,  400; 
Statthalter  of  Alsace-Lorraine,  486. 


Maria  Anna,  Wittelsbach  princess, 
214. 

Maria  Josepha,  Saxon  queen,  154. 

Marie  Louise,  wife  of  Napoleon  I.,  289. 

Maria  Theresa,  straits  of,  in  1740  a.d., 
127  ;  personality,  129  ;  courage  of, 
143  ;  negotiates  with  Frederick  the 
Great,  1756  a.d.,  153 ;  nearly  re¬ 
covers  Silesia,  164 ;  scruples  about 
Poland,  209. 

Marlborough,  John,  Duke  of,  in  Span¬ 
ish  Succession  War,  71 ;  at  Blen¬ 
heim,  74 ;  made  prince  of  the  em¬ 
pire,  76 ;  at  Alt-Ranstadt,  78 ;  in 
Belgium,  80  ff. ;  disgraced,  83. 

Marlborough,  Lady,  82. 

Marlenheim,  battle  of,  54. 

Marmont,  French  general,  253. 

Mars-la-Tour,  battle  at,  431. 

Marshall  Islands,  472. 

Marx,  Karl,  460-461,  493. 

Masella,  Nuncio,  465. 

Maurice  de  Saxe,  82. 

Max  Emmanuel,  elector  of  Bavaria, 
58,  70 ;  restored  to  his  people,  84. 

Maxen,  surrender  at,  173. 

Maximilian,  brother  of  Joseph  II., 
217. 

Max  Joseph,  elector  of  Bavaria,  213. 

Metternich,  becomes  minister,  289, 
311;  policy  of ,  324  ;  conservatism 
of,  327 ;  repressive  measures  of, 
331;  fall  of,  347-348. 

Metz,  battles  around,  431 ;  fall  of, 
442-443. 

Meza,  de,  Danish  general,  389. 

Mieroslawski,  367. 

Minden,  battle  of,  172. 

Mitchell,  Bute’s  envoy,  178. 

Mohacs,  battle  of,  45. 

Mollwitz,  battle  of,  133-134. 

Moltke,  Prussian  general,  389 ;  di¬ 
vides  forces  in  Franco-Prussian 
War,  428 ;  at  Sedan,  434 ;  and  the 
bombardment  of  Paris,  442 ;  at 
opening  of  Reichstag,  451. 

Mondoleh,  472. 

Montb61iard,  battle  at,  444. 

Monte  Carlo,  489. 

Montecucculi,  53. 

Montenegro,  504. 

Montmirail,  battle  of,  312. 

Moreau,  French  general,  240. 


600 


INDEX 


Morocco,  question  of,  498-501. 

Mortier,  French  general,  248. 

Moscow,  burning  of,  295. 

Most,  John,  463. 

Motte  Fouque,  General  de  la,  174. 

Mulheim,  incorporates  territory,  572. 

Munchengratz,  403. 

Munich,  455;  continuation  schools 
of,  539 ;  asphalt  factory  at,  571 ; 
housing  policy,  572-573 ;  city 
pawnship,  574 ;  Deutches  museum 
at,  575. 

Nachod,  skirmish  at,  404. 

Nachtigal,  explorer,  469,  471-472. 

Nantes,  Edict  of,  revoked,  28. 

Napoleon  Bonaparte,  successes  in 
Italy,  240 ;  at  Rastadt,  242 ;  causes 
murder  of  Enghien,  249 ;  and  the 
South  German  states,  250 ;  and 
General  Mack,  252-254 ;  in  Ber¬ 
lin,  264 ;  severe  demands  after 
Jena,  266 ;  at  Tilsit,  268 ;  demands 
on  Prussia,  273  ;  at  Erfurt,  274 ;  in¬ 
vades  Austria,  1809  a.d.,  286 ; 
breach  with  Russia,  290;  intimi¬ 
dates  the  Germans,  291 ;  his  Rus¬ 
sian  campaign,  294  ff . ;  returns 
from  Elba,  319  ;  flees  from  Water¬ 
loo,  321. 

Napoleon  III.,  intervention  in  Austro- 
Prussian  War,  407,  408;  wants 
compensation,  1866  a.d.,  410,  415; 
exposure  of  plans  for  aggrandize¬ 
ment,  427 ;  surrenders  at  Sedan, 
434 ;  sent  into  exile,  435. 

National  Liberals,  the,  453-454,  464. 

Neipperg,  Austrian  general,  133. 

Nettelbeck,  in  Colberg,  264. 

Neuchatel,  84. 

New  Guinea,  472. 

Ney,  French  general,  253. 

Niebuhr,  276. 

Nikolsburg,  Truce  of,  401,  408. 

Nobiling,  assassin,  462. 

Nollendorf,  battle  of,  307. 

North  German  Confederation,  413. 

North  Schleswig,  487-488. 

Nymwegan,  Peace  of,  1679  a.d.,  25, 54. 

Ognon,  battle  at,  444. 

Oliva,  Peace  of,  1660  a.d.,  17. 

Olivier,  French  minister,  422. 


Olmiitz,  journey  of  Manteuffel  to, 
374. 

Olympic  Games,  the,  556. 

Orange  River,  the,  469-470. 

Orleans,  battle  at,  444. 

Oudenarde,  battle  of,  80. 

Oudinot,  French  marshal,  306. 

Palatinate,  devastation  of,  50,  58 ; 
rebellion  in,  1848  a.d.,  366. 

Palikao,  French  minister,  437. 

Palm,  bookseller,  258. 

Paris,  Treaty  of,  1808  a.d.,  273,  281 ; 
first  Peace  of,  315;  second  Peace 
of,  321 ;  beginning  of  siege  of,  439  ; 
German  intrenchments  around, 
441 ;  the  question  of  bombard¬ 
ment,  441 ;  sufferings  of  the  people, 
445;  Treaty  of  (1856),  475. 

Partition  treaty,  1700  a.d.,  35. 

Patow,  Prussian  minister,  381. 

Paulsen,  scientist,  529. 

Persano,  Italian  admiral,  407. 

Peter  III.,  Czar  of  Russia,  179. 

Peters,  Karl,  473-474. 

v.  Peuker,  general,  451. 

Philip  of  Anjou,  declared  king  of 
Spain,  68 ;  83. 

Pfalz-Neuburg,  and  the  Cleves  in¬ 
heritance,  4  ff. 

Pietists,  41. 

Pillnitz,  Declaration  of,  232. 

Pitt,  William,  admiration  of  Frederick 
the  Great,  166 ;  succeeded  by  Bute, 
177. 

Pius  IX.,  pope,  455,  458;  death  of, 
459;  464. 

Pius  X.,  pope,  495. 

Plotho,  envoy  of  Frederick  the  Great, 
161. 

Podewils,  131. 

Podol,  skirmish  at,  403. 

Poischwitz,  truce  of,  303. 

Poland,  wars  with  Sweden,  13  ff. ; 
first  partition  of,  204,  209 ;  condi¬ 
tion  of,  in  eighteenth  century,  205 ; 
second  and  third  partitions  of,  236, 
237. 

Poles,  degeneracy  of,  206. 

Polish  provinces  abandoned  to  Russia, 
317. 

Polish  provinces,  Prussian,  problem 
of,  488-492. 


INDEX 


601 


Pomerania,  part  of,  becomes  Prussian, 
104-105. 

Pompadour,  Madame  de,  151. 

Poniatowski,  Stanislaus,  206. 

Posen,  see  of,  465. 

Potsdam,  Treaty  of,  1804  a.d.,  254. 

Pragmatic  Sanction,  the,  of  Charles 
VI.,  106-107. 

Prague,  fall  of,  1741  a.d.,  136;  cap¬ 
ture  of,  1744  a.d.,  140 ;  battle  near, 
1751  a.d.,  158 ;  Peace  of,  409. 

Pressburg,  Peace  of,  1805  a.d.,  256. 

Prokesch,  Austrian  envoy,  377. 

Providence  Islands,  the,  473. 

Prussia,  12 ;  becomes  a  kingdom,  35 ; 
army  reform,  279 ;  concludes  al¬ 
liance  with  France,  1812  a.d.,  293  ; 
first  Parliament  in,  357  ;  constitu¬ 
tion  granted  to,  359,  371 ;  and  the 
Crimean  War,  376-377 ;  and  the 
Franco-Austrian  War,  377  ;  at  odds 
with  Austria  on  Schleswig-Holstein 
question,  392 ;  threatened  with 
federal  execution,  395 ;  breach  with 
Austria,  1866  a.d.,  396  ;  at  war  with 
Austria,  1866  a.d.,  397  ff. ;  makes 
treaties  with  the  southern  states, 
414;  enthusiasm  for  French  War, 
422-423 ;  state  railroads  of,  467- 
468,  516-518,  567. 

Prussian  Parliament,  1848  a.d.,  radi¬ 
cal  nature  of,  358  ;  expelled,  359. 

Puffendorf,  44. 

Pultava,  battle  of,  79. 

v.  Puttkammer,  minister,  463,  465. 

Quatrebras,  battle  of,  320. 

Queensland,  472. 

Rahel,  265. 

Raiffeisen,  economist,  524. 

Railroad,  first  building  of  a,  340. 

Railroads,  state  (see  Prussia). 

Ramillies,  battle  of,  77. 

Rastadt,  Treaty  of,  1715  a.d.,  85; 
Congress  of,  241  ff. ;  murder  of  the 
envoys  at,  244. 

Ratisbon,  perpetual  Diet  of,  1663  a.d., 
45,  286. 

Rechberg,  Austrian  minister,  392. 

Redern,  Count,  451. 

Reichenbach,  Congress  of,  230; 
Treaty  of,  304. 


Reichensperger,  Centrist,  454. 

Reichstag,  the,  413  ;  opening  of  first, 
457 ;  and  compulsory  insurance, 
466 ;  468 ;  refuses  to  congratulate 
Bismarck,  483 ;  conference  of,  at 
Basel  with  French  chamber  of 
deputies,  506. 

Reille,  French  general,  433. 

Reunion,  courts  of,  55. 

Revolution,  of  1848,  344 ;  in  Austria, 
346  ;  in  Berlin,  348  ff. 

Rhine  confederation,  256. 

Richter,  Eugene,  452,  468,  483. 

Richthofen,  explorer,  469. 

Ried,  Treaty  of,  308. 

Rio  del  Rey,  river,  472. 

Roberts,  Lord,  502. 

Rohlfs,  S.,  explorer,  473. 

Rome,  occupied  by  royal  troops,  456. 

Romer,  Austrian  general,  133. 

Roon,  Prussian  minister  of  war,  388, 
442,  451,  464. 

Rosicrucians,  the,  in  Prussia,  226. 

Rossbach,  battle  of,  163. 

Roth,  the  Konigsberg  agitator,  19-20. 

Rudolph  II.,  claims  the  Cleves  in¬ 
heritance,  6. 

Ruete,  Frau,  473. 

Ryswick,  Peace  of,  63  ff. 

“Ryswick  Clause,”  86. 

Saarbrucken,  engagement  at,  428-429. 

Sackville,  Lord,  173. 

Sadowa,  battle  of  (or  Koniggratz), 
404  ff. 

Salzburg,  Protestant  exiles  from,  99. 

Samoa,  471,  481. 

Sand,  Karl,  murders  Kotzebue,  332. 

Sans  Souci,  guests  at,  186. 

Sarajevo,  murder  at,  507. 

Saxony,  servility  to  Napoleon,  266; 
saved  at  Congress  of  Vienna,  318; 
rebellion  in,  1848  a.d.,  366;  con¬ 
quered  by  Prussia,  400. 

Scharnhorst,  263,  275;  character  of, 
277-278,  293  ;  death  of,  304. 

Schill,  Major,  287. 

Schleiermacher,  282,  300,  329,  334, 
337. 

Schleswig-Holstein,  354 ;  question  of, 
385. 

Schmalz,  rector  of  Berlin  University, 
329. 


602 


INDEX 


Schon,  276. 

Schonbrunn,  Treaty  of,  1805  a.d., 
255;  new  treaty  signed  at,  476. 

Schools,  industrial  ( see  Germany, 
economic  progress). 

Schools,  types  of  ( see  Germany,  social 
progress) . 

Schulenberg,  Prussian  general,  133. 

Schulenburg,  commandant  of  Berlin, 
284. 

Schulze-Delitzsch,  economist,  523. 

Schurz,  Carl,  367. 

Schwarzenberg,  Austrian  commander, 
305;  inactivity  of,  311,  319. 

Schwarzenburg,  minister  of  George 
William  of  Brandenburg,  8. 

Schweidnitz  taken,  167. 

Schwerin,  Curt  von,  82,  157 ;  death 
of,  159. 

Schwerin,  Otto,  142. 

Seckendorf ,  Austrian  envoy  to  Freder¬ 
ick  William  I.,  108  ff. 

Sedan,  battle  of,  432  ff.,  474. 

Servia,  477,  502-504. 

Settlement  Commission,  the,  488-492. 

Seydlitz,  Prussian  general,  169,  171. 

Siemens,  scientist,  529. 

Sigismund,  John,  elector  of  Branden¬ 
burg,  5  ;  turns  Calvinist,  7-8. 

Sikorski,  Ignatius,  490. 

Silesia,  Prussian  claims  to,  28 ;  inva¬ 
sion  of,  by  Frederick  the  Great,  126. 

Silesians,  the,  pleasure  in  being  con¬ 
quered,  128. 

Skalitz,  skirmish  at,  404. 

Slankamen,  battle  of,  50. 

Smith,  Reichstag  member,  452. 

Sobieski,  John,  48 ;  death  of,  50. 

Social  Democrats,  459  ff. ;  462-464, 
467,  480,  483,  492-494. 

Social  Progress  ( see  Germany,  social 
progress) . 

Sohr,  battle  of,  143. 

Soltykoff,  Russian  general,  173. 

Somaliland,  474. 

Sophie  Charlotte,  Prussian  queen, 
charming  character  of,  40-41. 

Sophie  Dorothea,  princess  of  Ahlden, 
63,  110. 

Sophie  Dorothea,  queen  of  Frederick 
William  I.,  109  ff. 

Sophie  Louise,  Prussian  queen,  43. 

Soubise,  French  general,  162. 


Soult,  French  general,  253. 

Southwest  Africa,  469-471 ;  rebellion 
in,  493. 

Spade  and  hoe,  war  of  the,  60. 

Spain,  uprising  in,  1808  a.d.,  282; 
and  the  Moroccan  question,  498- 
501. 

Spandau,  fall  of,  263. 

Spanish  candidature,  the,  418. 

Spanish  inheritance,  partition  treaty, 
66,  67,  68. 

Spener,  41. 

Spicheren,  battle  of,  430. 

Sport  ( see  Germany,  social  progress). 

Stadion,  Austrian  minister,  271. 

Stageman,  276. 

St.  Germain,  peace  of,  26. 

St.  Gothard,  battle  of,  48. 

St.  Quentin,  battle  at,  444. 

State  railroads  ( see  Prussia,  state 
railroads) . 

Stein,  Baron,  character  of,  271 ;  re¬ 
called  by  Frederick  William  III., 
272 ;  reforms  of,  275  ff. ;  inter¬ 
cepted  letter  of,  283  ;  dismissal  of, 
285 ;  in  St.  Petersburg,  294,  298, 
334,  337. 

Steinmetz,  General,  428 ;  at  Metz, 
431. 

Stettin,  fall  of,  1806  a.d.,  263. 

Stocker,  court  preacher,  478-479. 

Strassburg,  taken  by  Louis  XIV.,  56. 

Sugar-beet  ( see  Germany,  economic 
progress) . 

Suvarov,  Russian  general,  238,  243, 
244. 

Syndicates  (see  Germany,  economic 
progress) . 

Sweden,  wars  with  Poland,  13  ff. 

Talleyrand,  246 ;  at  the  Congress  of 
Vienna,  317  ff. 

Talma,  actor,  274. 

Tangiers,  emperor  lands  at,  499. 

Tann,  von  der,  Bavarian  general,  443. 

Tegethoff,  Austrian  general,  405. 

“Teplitz  Punctation,”  335. 

Teschen,  congress  at,  1779  a.d.,  215. 

Teutonic  Order,  11-12. 

Thiers,  445 ;  president  of  the  French 
Republic,  447. 

Thomasius,  42. 

Thun,  Count  of,  405. 


INDEX 


603 


Thursday  Island,  472. 

Tilsit,  Treaty  of,  268. 

Togoland,  471-472. 

Tokoly,  Emmerich,  48. 

Torgau,  battle  of,  176. 

Torquemada,  inquisitor,  496. 
Totleben,  Russian  general,  175. 
Tours,  provisional  government  at, 
438. 

Trautenau,  skirmish  at,  404. 

Triple  Alliance,  52 ;  new,  498. 

Triple  Entente,  the,  499. 

Tripoli,  498. 

Tschaldscha,  504. 

Tugendbund,  281. 

Turenne,  54. 

Turin,  battle  of,  76. 

Turk-bell,  45. 

Turkey,  and  the  Balkans,  502-505. 
Twesten,  representative,  384. 
Tyrolese,  uprising  of,  in  1809  a.d., 
287. 

Uhrich,  French  general,  431. 

Ulm,  surrender  at,  252-254 ;  land 
policies  of,  571-572. 

Unfair  competition  laws,  520-521. 
Union,  the  Prussian,  370 ;  parliament 
at  Erfurt,  371. 

United  Diet,  summoning  of,  344. 
Utrecht,  Peace  of,  84. 

Valmy,  battle  of,  234. 

Vasvar,  Peace  of,  48. 

Vatican  Council,  455. 

Vereine ,  524-526. 

Versailles,  first  Treaty  of,  1755  a.d., 
150-151 ;  second  Treaty  of,  1756 
a.d.,  155 ;  Convention  of,  446 ; 
proclamation  of  the  empire  at,  450. 
Victoria,  Queen,  477. 

Victoria,  princess,  477. 

Vienna,  siege  of,  1683  a.d.,  48-49; 
Treaty  of,  1809  a.d.,  289  ;  Congress 
of,  316  if. ;  Final  Act,  336. 

Vie  tor,  F.  M.,  firm  of,  471. 
Villafranca,  Peace  of,  379. 

Villars,  French  marshal,  81. 

Villeroi,  Marshal,  72. 

Villersexel,  battle  at,  444. 

Vionville,  battle  of,  431. 

Virchow,  scientist,  384,  388. 

Voit,  Austrian  colonel,  174. 


Voltaire,  187 ;  first  meeting  with 
Frederick  the  Great,  188 ;  at  Sans 
Souci,  189 ;  escapades  of,  190 ; 
arrest  of,  191. 

Voss,  Countess,  282. 

Vossem,  Peace  of,  33. 

Vota,  Jesuit  priest,  34. 

Wachau,  skirmish  at,  309. 

Wagram,  battle  of,  289. 

Warsaw,  battle  of,  15. 

Wartburg,  festival  at  the,  329-330. 

Wartenberg,  Countess,  39. 

Wartenberg,  Kolb  von,  39. 

Wartenberg,  skirmish  at,  308. 

Waterloo,  battle  of,  320-321. 

Wehlau,  Treaty  of,  16. 

Weimar,  Grand  Duke  of,  grants  con¬ 
stitution,  327 ;  481. 

Weissenburg,  battle  at,  429,  430. 

Weitling,  William,  460. 

Welcker,  motion  of,  362. 

Wellington,  319. 

Werden,  513. 

v.  Werder,  Prussian  general,  431, 
475. 

Werther,  Prussian  minister,  421. 

Westminster,  Convention  of,  1755 
a.d.,  149-150. 

West  Prussia,  reforms  in,  211. 

Whale  Bay,  469-470. 

Wied,  prince  of,  504. 

Wieland,  poet,  275. 

Wilhelmine,  daughter  of  Frederick 
William  I.,  and  later  Margravine  of 
Baireuth,  110;  mendacity  of,  88- 
89,  186  ;  death  of,  170. 

William,  brother  of  Frederick  William 
III.,  273. 

William  I.,  Emperor,  in  battle  of  Bar- 
sur-Aube,  313 ;  as  prince  of  Prus¬ 
sia,  flight  to  England,  351 ;  be¬ 
comes  king  of  Prussia,  379 ;  and 
the  army  reform,  379  ff. ;  calls  Bis¬ 
marck  to  the  ministry,  382 ;  popu¬ 
larity  of,  411 ;  at  Sedan,  433  ;  and 
the  new  empire,  449 ;  opens  first 
Reichstag,  451 ;  452-453,  458-459, 
464,  466,  472,  475  ;  death  of,  477  ; 
479,  483,  496. 

William  II.,  Emperor,  accession  of, 
478-479 ;  conflict  with  Bismarck, 
480  ff . ;  anti-socialist  policy,  482 ; 


604 


INDEX 


lights  Bismarck,  483 ;  makes 
amends,  483 ;  lands  at  Tangiers, 
499;  wants  “place  in  the  sun,” 
501. 

William  III.,  of  Orange,  53 ;  forms 
grand  alliance,  69. 

Wimpffen,  French  general,  436. 

Windhorst,  Reichstag  member,  454, 
465,  480. 

Windischgratz,  Austrian  general,  356- 
357. 

Winterfeldt,  general  of  Frederick  the 
Great,  162. 

Wittelsbach,  three  lines  of,  213. 

Wittgenstein,  Count,  283. 

Woermann,  C.,  firm  of,  471. 

Wolf,  Jesuit  priest,  34. 

Wolner,  minister  of  Frederick  Wil¬ 
liam  II.,  227. 


Worms,  Treaty  of,  1743  a.d.,  139. 
Worth,  battle  at,  430. 

Wrangel,  General,  355;  marches  on 
Berlin,  358;  389,451. 

Wreschen,  492. 

Wusterhausen,  Treaty  of,  108. 

York,  Prussian  general,  228,  263 ; 
timid  counsels  of,  284 ;  295 ; 

treason  of,  296  ff. ;  disapproves  of 
Bliicher,  306 ;  337. 

Zanzibar,  473-474. 

Zenta,  battle  of,  51. 

Ziethen,  Prussian  general,  174,  175, 
176. 

Znaim,  armistice  of,  289. 

Zollverein,  founding  of  the,  340. 
Zorndorf,  battle  of,  168. 


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